OK, let me see if I come close to understanding how to get correct sounding bass.

1) Lets say it is given you have good quality bass coming from your speakers in the first place.

2) You are in a room, and rooms will cause bass SPL level to be all over the place depending where you are in the room.

3) Also the room will cause the bass to be not as clear as it should be.

4) The reason the bass is not as good as it could be is because of reflections colliding with each other.

5) Subwoofer placement is used to try to correct as many problems with the bass as possible.

6) Bass trapping is used to try and remove unwanted reflections that would otherwise make their way back into the listening area.

7) The more bass trapping the better.

8) The faster the bass is trapped the better.

9) Corners are best for bass trapping.

10) Compressed fiberglass is the cheapest, easiest bass trap material.

11) You can cover the fiberglass with almost any fabric.

12) Some use risers or the stage as bass traps.

13) Furniture with lots of stuffing will work as a bass trap.

OK, that is what I think is correct, now I have a few questions.

1) Can bass trapping be used anywhere in the room?

2) Should the listening area be the best place for traps, or can it be across the room and work just as well or better?

3) Is the shape of the fiberglass important, or can it be made into shapes and used just as effectively that way? Instead of a flat panel across the vertical corner, how about a solid column of fiberglass in the corner?

4) Would a old subwoofer that is not being driven work as a bass trap?

5) If you were to try and use drapes as sub traps, how thick or how many layers would they have to be in order to do any good?

6) Will a drywall wall in regular construction work as a bass trap?

7) Will a drywall ceiling that is suspended on resilient channel act as a bass trap?

I think I'm starting to get the hang of how bass trapping works and why it is done, any suggestions would be helpful.

Thanks, Deron.

With the amount of questions in there, it's hard to focus on any one. I can tell you that several of them are incorrect. Material that covers bass traps needs to be acoustically transparent. Otherwise, the material will not absorb the frequencies you are targeting. Drapes don't work as bass traps. Drapes deaden a room to high frequency. Too many drapes will significantly reduce the soundstage, decrease imaging, and may affect clarity. The more bass trapping the better is also incorrect. You need to know what frequencies you are targeting (the peaks in other words) and how bad they are. If some of your peaks are 12dB or more, than you may need more traps. If it's around 6 dB, you may only need one or two. Traditionally, traps are placed in the corner although it doesn't have to be, but that is where most of the bass freqeuncies are excited (higher peaks). You really don't want to have tons of bass traps in order to keep aesthitics and WAF high. If it can't be tamed with traps, then EQ will be the final answer. As many folks have said on the board, treat with positioning first (seating, speaker, sub), then traps, then EQ. The rest of your questions could go on forever in an answer.

Each room is different with regards to needs. You may want to have a room analysis prior to choosing where and how much treatments you need. This can be done based on your room dimensions (less accurate) or on site (more accurate). There are people within this forum that will do it for a reasonable price and make recommendations about treatments based on the findings.

OK, let me see if I come close to understanding how to get correct sounding bass.

Since it's obvious you care enough to spend the time to truly understand this stuff, let me direct you to the "reading room" at my company's web site:

http://www.realtraps.com/articles.htm

Spend a few hours there and I promise you'll learn the answers to everything you asked. There's also a Videos page linked from the Acoustics Info section you'll probably find useful. And if something still is unclear, ask here.

--Ethan

Ethan

Yeah, I probably read that stuff a few times now. The problem is there is so much there it takes quite a while to digest it all. Also I read other threads on it and everyone is talking in Chinese.

At first I could not understand why you would want to "bass trap", if the bass already sounds good why bother to go to all that trouble. It took quite a bit of reading to figure out that when you install bass traps you can make the bass sound louder, cleaner and more uniform throughout the room.

What is needed is the "Idiot's guide to room treatment". Something alone the line of "do this", "try that", "do not do this" and "this is what you get". Kept "real simple" for the DIY people that do not want to make a production out of it.

Thanks, Deron.

What is needed is the "Idiot's guide to room treatment".

I'll write that right after someone else writes the "Idiots guide to brain surgery." :D

Seriously, this is a common dilemma. If you want to DIY and make sure it's done right, you need to spend a month or whatever reading and absorbing. I spent a huge amount of time writing all the articles (and videos) on our site, many originally for popular print magazines, to educate folks who want to learn. Whether they plan to become customers or not. I imagine ten times more people read those articles to learn how to DIY than to know what products to buy. :eek:

If you don't want to bother becoming an expert yourself, the alternative is to either hire a pro designer or buy bass traps and other treatment from a knowledgeable vendor like yours truly. Then you'll be told exactly what to do, and can sleep knowing it will be correct.

--Ethan

With the amount of questions in there, it's hard to focus on any one. I can tell you that several of them are incorrect. Material that covers bass traps needs to be acoustically transparent. Otherwise, the material will not absorb the frequencies you are targeting. Drapes don't work as bass traps. Drapes deaden a room to high frequency. Too many drapes will significantly reduce the soundstage, decrease imaging, and may affect clarity. The more bass trapping the better is also incorrect. You need to know what frequencies you are targeting (the peaks in other words) and how bad they are. If some of your peaks are 12dB or more, than you may need more traps. If it's around 6 dB, you may only need one or two. Traditionally, traps are placed in the corner although it doesn't have to be, but that is where most of the bass freqeuncies are excited (higher peaks). You really don't want to have tons of bass traps in order to keep aesthitics and WAF high. If it can't be tamed with traps, then EQ will be the final answer. As many folks have said on the board, treat with positioning first (seating, speaker, sub), then traps, then EQ. The rest of your questions could go on forever in an answer.

Material that covers bass traps don't have to be acoustically transparent. Many will put OC3 in the front corners with paper facing OUT if they don't want to absorb the high frequencies. The paper is not "Acoustically Transparent", yet the Fiberglass with paper facing out still performs the same for bass trapping at the Low Frequencies. LF penetrate through things where high frequencies do not. You need acoustically transparent fabric where you want HF to pass.