New RealTraps demo lets you hear the benefits of room treatment

[Ethan Winer]

For people who are skeptical of the improvements claimed for room treatment, our short Hearing is Believing demo will make you a believer. The demo includes an audio clip containing a variety of music excerpts recorded in a room with and without RealTraps bass traps and diffusors.

If you've ever recorded music played through loudspeakers and played the result through speakers again, you know how distant and boxy and off-mike this usually sounds. But in a room that's well-treated, even after a second pass through your own loudspeakers the sound remains crisp and clear. This demo lets you experience the benefit of a well-treated room, and you don't even need to wear headphones to get the full effect.

Enjoy!

--Ethan

[HOTC]

thats Impressive,what did you put on the ceiling?

[SoundEng1]

Very Nice Ethan. thumbsup

[Finnish]

WOW! Now I believe..

[sfoote]

That sounds really nice. Thanks so much for showing the clear difference. You're right -- no need to label one versus the other.

And now I'm going to sound ungracious. I'm sorry, but I have to ask the next question.

That's around $17,000 of room treatment. How much of that improvement can I get for $1,700? or for $7,000? It would be great (for us) to hear the relative differences of less than 100% wall treatment. It might not be great (for you) if a lot of benefit can be had from your great products while still using fewer of them!

Sean

[George Necola]

you have less reverberation

I expected this.

[Bartosz Idzi]

Originally Posted by sfoote

That's around $17,000 of room treatment.

That was the question i was about to ask yesterday when i heard the file - how much does it cost to treat a room like that?

[Glenn Kuras]

Hats off there Ethan!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That's around $17,000 of room treatment. How much of that improvement can I get for $1,700? or for $7,000?

Sure you can... DYI is one way to go.

See this area of Gearslutz
http://www.gearslutz.com/board/studi...ion-acoustics/

[geareyes]

Night and day!

Mike

[Ethan Winer]

Originally Posted by sfoote

How much of that improvement can I get for $1,700?

Believe it or not you could get much of the benefit for that much smaller amount. The low-end improvement is from having corner traps, and even four MiniTraps ($800) would help a lot. Most of the improvement in clarity is from the side-wall and ceiling absorbers, which could be handled by four MicroTraps ($560).

One aspect we were not able to show well in a recording is the sound of the room with diffusors. We also listened (and recorded) with all the diffusors (only) removed exposing the bare wall behind. The sound in the room was much better with the diffusors in place, but not so much at the listening position where the recording was made. Everywhere else the room sounded much larger and more spacious. You can hear a small difference in spaciousness in that third recording, but it was subtle and seemed not worth posting.

--Ethan

[jwl]

Just to add to this discussion.... about half of the $17k is for diffusors. These are by far our most expensive panels, because they are very labor intensive to build.

You can get similar results using only absorption.... diffusion is more "icing on the cake in a great room... if you have the budget for it" as opposed to "essential component of room treatment."

[audiothings]

nice! very impressive...

the zoom h2, if memory serves me right, has its -6 dB point @ 160 Hz... it'd be great to hear the results with some mics which can capture some serious low end... even a behringer ecm thing should do fine...

hoping,

[euphonic]

Maybe you should post some measurements?!

[Ethan Winer]

Originally Posted by audiothings

the zoom h2, if memory serves me right, has its -6 dB point @ 160 Hz

Not sure where you got that. As it happens, I measured the response of my H2 a few days ago (crude test, pink noise through my big JBL 4430 speakers) and it seems more or less flat from below 30 Hz to about 15 KHz through the built-in mics. The roll-off at both ends may well be from my speakers because 4430s are -3 dB at 35 Hz, and the Zoom was on-axis with the woofer instead of the tweeter. (I was checking only the low end response in that test).

We're going to do this demo again in a few weeks and make a video out of it. I'll try to remember to test the Zoom H2 against my DPA 4090 because I'd like to know this too.

--Ethan