The demo method we promoted, because of my perspective at that time, was to sit the new customer in the listening chair in a demo room with TubeTrap stacks laid down onto the floor diagonally into the room. Play their favorite demo music, preferably something with strong, fast dynamics. Then tip the TubeTraps upright in the front two corners and the dynamic part of the music would become visceral, punchy and deeper. Dynamic bass performance would clear up.

One day we got a call from Gary Douglas, our dealer in Tokyo, who was the top TubeTrap salesman in the world. He hemmed and hawed and then began. He apologized first for what he was about to say and then proceeded to tell his story. He reported that after many tries he gave up on our “Demo the Difference” promotion program. It worked of course to tighten up the bass response in the listening room. But he just couldn’t get the customer’s attention, who had just walked in off the noisy streets in downtown Tokyo.

His ”Demo the Difference 2.0” was to invite the customer to the listening chair in a typically furnished room and played the music. Then he’d carry a trap column into the room and set it up on a spot about half-way between the speakers and the listener position, near the side walls. He’d rotate the reflector towards the side wall, away from the speaker. Same for the other side wall and notice… no TubeTrap in the front corner. This location was in front of where the crosstalk reflections bounced off the side walls. In this position the far or crosstalk wall reflection was absorbed and an acoustic shadow was cast across the listening position. The customer immediately noticed the imaging magically snap into place.

That was when GD would ask if they would like to hear some more improvements and he’d haul out another pair of columns which went into the front two corners, the corners behind the speakers, where the listener would marvel again at how the bass tightened up and treble became clearer and sparkling.

And so, our demo recommendation changed from demo the dynamic upgrade first to demo the imaging upgrade first and then, once the customer was adjusted to hearing TubeTrap upgrades, to set up the dynamic upgrade. However, we noticed it was difficult to change the Demo the Difference sequence for many of our dealers. We had developed the TubeTrap to clean up the bass by putting traps in the front two corners. We discovered later how we could use it to clean up the imaging. The dealers had gotten used to demoing the front two corners first, to clean up the bass, and demoing the side wall positions to clean up the imaging second and weren’t interested in reversing the sequence. We learned another lesson about TubeTraps, it’s the listeners who are in charge of what the TubeTrap does for them, not what the engineer intended it to do for them.

The sketch here, as above, is for a properly proportioned listening room, such as GD had in his Tokyo Demo room or most any audiophile often has. Here we can see how separated the two wall reflecting paths actually are from each other. The image wrecking cross-talk reflection is located on the wall fairly close to the listener.

Notice that the TubeTrap stack, two traps screwed together into a 6’ tall cylinder, the circle is not against the wall but forward and out from the earlier position. Now both the stage widening and the crosstalk reflections are eliminated by this placing of just one stack. The dead side faces forward and reflectors are oriented to the back of the room. Here is shown the absorbing and backscattering effect of the TubeTrap placed at the intersection of the two beam paths. Stack is located to the right and ahead of the listener. Crosstalk signal from the left is absorbed, stage widening reflection from the right is backscattered into a low level delayed, backfill diffuse reflection that doesn’t shift imaging.