Bass Traps: Floor to ceiling, or half the corner good enough? - AcousticsInsider.com

Hello what's going on? I'm Jessica again from acousticinsider.com, where she teaches home studio acoustic treatment techniques for audio professionals, but without all the voodoo. Today I want to cover a question I received about placing

bass

traps

and that question is: is it

enough

to cover about

half

the height of your room with

bass

traps

or do you really need to cover the entire distance from the

floor

to the

ceiling

? , like you need to place the bass traps from the

corner

of the

floor

from that triple

corner

of the floor. the way to the triple corner at the top of your room and it's a

good

question and there are two critical points that I want you to keep in mind to understand how to place bass traps and what you should focus on so let's start So the first point The thing to understand is that capturing bass in a home studio is about quantity, not quality.

Well, bass traps, as we normally use them, are porous absorbers that we use as bass traps, they are not frequency specific tools, like resonance absorbers. for example, with resonance absorbers, they operate in a very narrow frequency range or a very narrow band of frequencies, so when you place them you try to find a place in the room where that particular frequency is at a very high level. sound pressure so that when you put the panel there, that resonance absorber you get maximum absorption, but porous absorbers don't work that way, they are very broadband and trying to use them as a specific absorber doesn't really work, but is a game.

Numbers is a panel numbers game, so the more bass traps you put in your room, the better the bass control will be. It's quantity over quality that you are trying to maximize the number of panels, not where exactly you place them and So in that sense, covering the corner from floor to

ceiling

is definitely the best option because you are placing more capture quantity of bass than quality, but there is a second point that you should understand about this and that is that you try the corners where two walls meet the floor. or the ceiling are not actually the best places to trap base with porous absorbers and the simple reason is that porous absorbers absorb velocity, not pressure, as I have talked about several times on this channel, so they absorb sound in a place where the sound speed component of a given wavelength of a given sound wave is highest, not where the sound pressure is highest and the three corners are usually places where you get a lot of sound pressure, for Therefore, a very low speed of sound, which is why the three corners are not.

In theory, there are no really

good

places, at least for absorbing low frequencies with porous absorbers, that doesn't mean you should look for the best place with the highest speed of sound for a particular frequency and then put the panels there. I have tried it. It doesn't really work, so quantity over quality is a better approach, but the main thing is that the three corners are generally not the best places to absorb low frequencies with porous absorption. This doesn't mean that the three corners don't work at all for pore-absorbing bass capture, in practice things aren't usually as clear as in theory, at least not in the kind of messy acoustics of a home studio, but that It means you don't need to prioritize test corners for bass capture, but what that means for you is that you don't need to go out of your way to make sure your bass traps reach every triple corner of your room, so which should follow the Quantity over quality, correct idea, try to fill as much space in the corner with bass traps as you can and if that means certain three corners are covered very well, but if the easiest setup is to fill bass traps in your room means that certain tricorders are left exposed, it doesn't really matter, so in summary, if you're thinking about how to best cover the corners, fill the corners with bass traps, keep those two rules of thumb in mind: quantity over quality, so that you always prioritize the number of panels over where exactly you place them and then you can safely ignore what happens to the three corners.

In reality, they're just not a priority if you leave them exposed because it's too complicated to fill them, it probably doesn't matter anymore. He said that obviously you always have to do the best with what you've got good, so if you only have a handful of bass traps to put in your room and all you can do is fill

half

the corner, do that. See what happens, see how far you get with that, but in that case it's definitely worth focusing on the middle type of corner section rather than starting with the three corners at the top or bottom right of the room, but Ultimately, always aim. to fill as much of the corner as possible, quantity over quality is the name of the game now as a final note if you're still not sure how all this talk about bass traps and bass traps and treating your room fits into the bigger picture how to make your room translate how to get to a stage, a place where you can truly trust your speakers and don't have to second-guess every decision you make, remember I have my home studio acoustic treatment framework for you. to download at the link in the description, okay, it's basically my five-step framework for systematically treating your room and getting it to translate, so those are the five steps to follow in sequence to get the most out of your room and your speakers . make sure you're not going around in circles, it's all about focusing on the right step at the right time and making sure they all complement each other correctly, so obviously we cover speaker placement and listening position, where we cover the treatment with absorption. and diffusion, I talk about when to measure, I talk about when to integrate a subwoofer and I talk about when to include resonance absorbers, speaker decoupling, so they are all those steps that are often mentioned as part of the treatment process, but they get in a broader framework to Make sure you get the most out of your studio, so remember to download it at the link in the description, but for now that's all for this video.

I hope I answered your question about placing bass traps in corners. See you in the next video