OOOOOOOhhhhh! BASS TRAPS. I thought everybody had a lot of spare time and was going fishing! My Bad.

Bill Corkery

In a sealed box, the front panel acts as a resonator that traps/cancels it's tuned frequency. The resonant frequency is dependent on the volume of air space in the box, and the thickness of the front panel. Being rather frequency specific and narrow bandwidth, the resonator traps are good if you have measured/calculated to know what frequencies you're going after. If you're not sure, they can do more harm than good, though it's pretty safe to say that smaller rooms will need a lot of help in the low frequency area.

The pegboard faced box will be sort of like a Helmholtz resonator (a box with slats or ports tuned to very specific frequencies), a panel resonator, and a porous absorber (that traps sound waves and converts them into heat). These with their wider bandwidth, are not as effective at specific frequencies as the resonators, but are a good general treatment that covers a wide range. I like to put a curved (poly cylindrical) face on these to add diffusion to the equation, while also blending the "box" into the wall nicely. Here's a couple of poly diffusers that I made (mainly for diffusion, not bass control) for the control room.

PLEASE note, that I'm just interpreting stuff that I've read and been told, and am by no means an expert in this area. In other words, I just might be talking out my arse (among friends though).

A better version (though much more of a pain to build) of DIY tube traps is at Jon Risch's site. This cat knows his shit. I made these with hi-loft polyester batting, 'cause I don't dig fiberglass, and they work great. If you make Gale's pipe insul ones, go with 2" thick instead of the 1" he calls for. And if you hate fiberglass like me, cover it with thin (.5 mil or less) plastic sheet to contain the fibers. Then, before covering with fabric, wrap some poly batting (maybe .5 inches thick) around it to re-gain some of the hf absorbtion that the plastic took away (unless you want the HF diffusion).

Thanks alot guys for so much good information. I have a better understanding of what are and how bass traps work.

My room is small with low ceilings so when I have a drummer in here the kick fills the room. I just want to tame some of that.

I think what I well do is build several resonator type bass traps different sizes. This way may help to cover more low frequency's.

This is more for the sake of recording and not mixing. As of now, the mixes translate pretty good to other playback systems as far as the low end goes. I just want to clean up the room and not have to clean it up with EQ.

Jeremy,

Here's an interesting thread about using a kick drum tunnel , which may help you in your quest for kick drum isolation.

You guys are great! The timing is great cuz I'm doing my sound room now.

I'm not looking into instructions on how to build a Babe-Trap. I know you can do it with a Ferrari or a cool mill or so in the bank but what about the do it yourselfers?


/Ricache