Tubes vs. Panels?

Don't know what Nsgarch replied, but his description makes perfect sense to me in light of Jon Risch's tube trap recipe. Half solid, half open means to me that if you look at the tube from one end then 1/2 the diameter is filled with material and the other half is open space. The idea is that the waves are "trapped" for a certain length of time and more slowly released back into the room. This would help bass bumps in certain frequency ranges. The diameter of the tubes determines how low of a frequency will be affected by the tube trap. I can't remember the exact numbers but I think that a trap of 16" diameter is good down to a couple hundred hertz. I've heard from Ethan Weiner that placement of bass traps may not be all that critical, they just need to be in the room. But I would encourage folks to investigate that since I may have taken his words out of context.

I have no idea if tube traps are better than panel traps for bass. I do know that GIK has a good reputation and loyal following. As does Real Traps.

I use a combination of 12 tube bass traps and 5 panels, all DIY. I've also recently added some second hand treatments from Eighth Nerve for corner treatments. I've found that any one treatment method alone does not do much. When several treatments are used together the results are much, much better.

One issue with all of this is that some traps and absorption devices may also affect frequency ranges that you may not necessarily want them to. I'm sure the pro's know how to get this pretty close in a room but the rest of us are left with plain old trial and error.

Dan (LOL) I sent Mike Jon Rische's site and another DIY site as well. Your interpretation BTW is incorrect (as far as all the info I've read anyway). "half open" in the context of tube traps , means that half of the exterior curved surface has to be wrapped or covered. And the other half of the surface, the fiberglas is exposed.

If you've ever seen an ASC tube trap, they are marked as to which half is which so the user can orient them as desired -- meaning that if you turn the open side toward the wall, they absorb mostly bass, but little HF. The tube interior should be left open to provide a resonant chamber which dissipates the bass energy (sort of like an organ pope in reverse ;-)

Ah, that's probably the reason for the suggestion to use some type of plastic sheeting around 1/2 the diameter. Supposedly, you can tune the amount of reflection by turning the tube trap. I did that on some of my traps but I have to admit I was not able to find much of a difference. Probably because I didn't use a sheeting that worked as well as some others.

That's organ PIPE :-) no offense to my Catholic friends.

I think that you guys are describing a Helmholtz resonator? If this is the case - Helmholtz resonators are tuned towards very specific frequencies. The application is completely different to a panel - a resonator only removes the frequency it is tuned to, whereas panels remove a wider band of frequencies. The frequency band and the level of attenuation depends on the thickness of the panel, the density of the material, and how far it is placed away from reflective surfaces.