Newsletter
Art Tells Why We Need TubeTraps
Art Noxon, PE Acoustical is ASC’s founder & inventor of the TubeTrap. This week Art reminds us of the usefulness and purpose of having the TubeTrap as part of your essential Hifi listening gear. Enjoy this short video!
|
What Makes the TubeTrap Special Among Commercial Bass Traps?
First, let’s briefly look at the wave behavior in a normally sized room being used for powerful audio playback. This will provide the background needed to understand the benefits of TubeTrap bass trap diffusers.
Bass range room gain comes from the horizontal and vertical components of the spherical bass wavefront emanating from the speaker and their multiple reflections off the floor, ceiling and side walls in the front of the listening room. Each musical event produces some sort of sustain that often lasts 1/8th second or more. During that time, the sonic wave front travels 140 feet, which is across the room 9 or 10 times and vertically over 15 times. This causes a rapid increase in stored energy and sound level in the front of the room which slowly expands out into the rest of the room, engulfing the listener in a wave of nonsensical sound that is a replica(s) of what the loudspeaker just played. This unwanted sound energy blurs the rapidly changing sound level (and musicality) contained in the source material. To maximize enjoyment of your music or accuracy of your mixing, this blurring must be controlled. Enter scene: bass traps.
Just as there are many types of sounds, there are many types of bass traps. They differ primarily in the speed of their sound absorbing action. This matters a great deal because each single sonic event begins with an attack transient, a rapid growth in sound level. This is the single most important sound we hear when identifying the source of the sound. Clean attack transients provide broad dynamics with punch and impeccable rhythm. Bloated (or truncated) attack transients rob music of its life, creating a flat sound that lacks emotional engagement. TubeTraps are fast bass traps that begin converting acoustic energy during the very first impulse of sound that reaches them, ensuring maximum resolution of your attack transients.