Basstraps provide the foundation for controlling your room acoustic. A basstrap is an essential component of high-end audio listening or music mixing, and is applicable to home theater rooms and concert halls. Sound engineers and audiophiles need to hear sound reproduced accurately, and rooms without basstraps tend to obscure the musical elements by emphasizing certain notes and masking others.

Many basstrap products operate on the “quarter wavelength” principle, whereby the lowest frequency able to be absorbed is that whose wavelength is equal to four times the thickness of the absorber panel. For example, a 100 Hz sound has a wavelength of about 11.3 feet, so a typical sound absorber would need to be 34 inches thick to provide much improvement in this range!

An ASC basstrap operates much differently, using the relationship between the natural capacitance of an air volume and the measured flow-resistivity of a spun glass fiber membrane to achieve an acoustic rolloff that operates far below the quarter wavelength frequency. For example, the 16″ diameter TubeTrap, a premier and popular ASC basstrap, operates effectively to below 50 hz.