Most rooms don’t need acoustical treatment.

Miller Carbon’s words are an excellent explanation of why cables can sound so different even if we can’t identify exactly why.
“But you might want to keep in mind that just because we cannot explain why something works, does not mean it does not in fact work. Happens all the time. Can you explain how your car works? Yet it does.”

Does a bass trap absorb bass (ie.reduce amount of bass heard in a room) or make bass better? Will i hear improvement in bass? Thanks

What a bass trap does is act like a shock absorber that dampens resonance. Any normal room the bass waves hit a wall, or ceiling, floor, bounce back, and then basically bounce back and forth until gradually the sound fades out. This takes a big fraction of a second or longer during which time the bass is reverberating in the room adding to the volume of bass you hear, and also the reflections make the sound of the original bass note less distinct and clear. What people call muddy or bloated bass. 

Bass traps are designed to absorb some of this pressure wave. So yes you hear less bass. But they affect mostly the later reflected resonant bass not  the initial bass coming off the speaker. So the bass you are left with is less but more clear. 

This is exactly the same as when you put a small panel on a wall that absorbs midrange or treble. You hear a little less mid and top end, but what you do hear is more clear and distinct. 

Makes sense, thanks,


bass traps seem relatively small. Is it just alittle goes a long way? Or an ample amount of bass traps will be more beneficial? How much is too much?

The lower the frequency the longer the wavelength and so therefore the larger the treatment must be. Low bass waves are 50 ft and more so bass traps are relatively large. I had one in my room, tried it all over the place, it is now hanging from the ceiling where it does a great job absorbing the high volume output from my Delta Unisaw. Yeah my shop has some old discarded acoustic panels too. Would call it a dedicated sawing room but that would be a groaner, it does have quite good acoustics though, for a shop. 

So in my room one was too much. There's more than one way of doing this. Townshend Podiums cleaned up my bass a huge amount, without any of the problems of the bass traps. I'm not the only one to notice this either. So watch out, a lot of people have a knee-jerk reaction that it must be the room. Sometimes they may even be right.