Quote:
Originally Posted by JFreak
DSP room correction is like having so intelligent shoes that tell your watch when you cannot run any faster. Nice, but does not make you run any faster.
Room needs to be physically treated, otherwise better listen with headphones. As soon as you crank up the volume, room starts to be a problem no matter how much DSP treatment. So long as it is not a problem at standard 85dB, okay then. But unreated room is still untreated room.
Unless, as I said, it is made of thin paper. Wooden walls are not so much of a problem compared to concrete.
|
Yes physical bass traps are the ideal but you miss the point. I’m not sure what this has to do with shoes. A better analogy would be that physical bass traps are like a Pultec analog EQ working at limited ranges of frequencies whereas DSP correction is like a surgical multi band plug-in EQ. As I said, in a room of the dimensions we are talking about, the acoustics are very problematic AND there is too limited a space to install the bass traps required to completely solve the problem. I don’t know the height of larsongs room but it is probably not far off being a cube. That is a worse case scenario for acoustics because of the inherent coincident room modes.
I have £5000 worth of RealTraps in my room and there is simply no space for any more. These are as good as off the shelf traps get but they have only partially solved my room issues. They are much more effective than the ones GIK make which are not bad and the Vicoustic one. I got these before the advent of DSP correction otherwise I would have gone with that. Foam bass traps are pretty ineffective and useless at lower frequencies. When manufactures like Auralex claim their product is working at frequencies as low as 40Hz or even 80Hz - well they’re just not telling the truth.
Part of the problem is that most bass traps have a centre frequency where they are most effective and the effectiveness tails off either side of that frequency, often quite steeply. You need to be very lucky if that centre frequency is where you have a problem.
You can have bass traps made tuned to a particular frequency but it gets expensive quickly AND... you then open a whole can of worms in that they need to be placed very carefully which is not easy and in a small room often impractical.
Also, the problems with Larsongs room start at around 40Hz. Apart from the fact that almost all off the shelf bass traps don’t do much around that frequency you need a LOT OF THEM to be effective.
This is about as low as off the shelf traps go.
http://realtraps.com/p_megatraps.htm and as you can see, it’s not doing much at 40Hz. They work over an unusually wide frequency range but the places I need to put them to get rid of a spike I have at 80Hz does nothing at 126Hz where I have a massive spike of coincident room modes. And the reverse is true - the places where they eat into 126Hz, there’s virtually no absorbency at 80Hz. And that assumes it is practical to actually place the traps exactly where you need them. In a small room this is often not possible. In my case, I physically cannot install enough traps to get rid of the issue I have at 126Hz regardless of how effective they are. You can’t just stick bass traps anywhere for them to be effective where they are needed. And as the saying goes - you cannot have too many bass traps.
So I repeat, DSP room correction is the way to go, ideally with a hardware solution like the ones mentioned in this thread or the Trinnov box. If larsong’s room was at leat twice the size I’d say yes, give physical traps a go but you need a lot of them and either need to know how to make DIY ones that actually work at lower frequencies or spend a LOT of money on effective off the shelf traps.