Bass Traps And It’s Placement

Corner bass traps

If you want to get your home studio to sound great, acoustic treatment is necessary. Creating a secure listening environment is the aim of the treatment; ideally, the space should have constant frequency response so that mixes played on different systems translate! Low frequency build-up is particularly problematic in small to medium-sized spaces. Bass trapping takes care of these low frequencies and gives you a better sounding studio, a crucial component of any recording studio design when the right placement is done. Although standard absorption panels are excellent for reducing reflections, bass requires a more aggressive strategy. Bass traps are frequently seen in studio corners since that is where low-frequency accumulation typically occurs. Placing all of your traps in the corners, in areas that will absorb the most bass, is a smart move.

The 90° angle formed by the two walls is eliminated with a bass trap in the corner, lowering reflections. If you have a thick bass trap in the corner, it will absorb the excessive bass that is cluttering up your control room because bass prefers to accumulate there. You can’t really over-bass-trap a room, so don’t worry about installing as many bass traps as you can because the low-end is heavy and huge. The positioning will be ideal for bass trapping, as well as help diffuse sound waves around the space.

Why should a room be acoustically treated?

The short answer is “room modes”. The shape and dimensions of any particular space determine which frequencies are resonant in the room. The low end will be amplified, some frequencies will be emphasised, others will be muted, and room modes will generally provide an unbalanced, artificial listening environment.

Bass frequencies fade more slowly than other frequencies. A typical oddity with low end is where the bass sounds monotonous, as if every note is played at the same volume, even though this is plainly not the case. Lower pitches physically have longer waveforms that bounce off walls and around the room before they finally decay. Low end modes also serve to mask frequencies nearby. The end result is a completely hazy bass buildup that distorts the audio coming from your speakers.

Bass traps are installed to be useful down into the frequency spectrum where issues with room modes originate. Standard 3″ begin to lose its’ efficacy at about 250Hz, but maximum modal resonance issues happen below 150 Hz in the so-called “sparsely populated modal area” for which bass traps are used. They often include components like membranes, airspaces, and extra fibreglass thicknesses (up to six or more) to lower absorption into the double digit range. The three potential locations for installing bass traps are :

1. Where two walls meet the floor or ceiling is known as a tri-corner. 

A square or rectangular space has eight triangular corners. All room modes are impacted by the placement of a bass trap in this area. For placement in the tri-corners, there are specific triangular bass traps like Timber Acoustics Tri Traps.

Absorption Panels

2. Wall/wall intersections, like the meeting point of the side and back walls. 

A square or rectangle room has four corners. The primary length and width modes as well as some of the height modes will be impacted by placing a bass trap against a wall or in a wall corner. Timber Acoustics Corner Traps or tri traps are used in these intersections.

Absorption panels , corner traps and acoustic diffusers set up in a home theatre

 

3. A ceiling or a wall. 

Most rooms have enough wall and ceiling space to install bass traps like the Timber Acoustics Bass Traps. A wall-mounted bass trap typically has the greatest effect on the room modes brought on by the two parallel surfaces. For instance, installing a bass trap on the side wall will mostly change the width mode. 

Tri traps in music studio

Check out : The Science Behind Acoustics

If you have any further questions regarding acoustic treatment, bass traps and its placement, you may contact us. To get your room/studio acoustically treated check out Timber Acoustics store for all that you would need!

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