Auralex Bass Traps Review | [Unbiased] (2023)

FAQs

Are 2 bass traps enough? ›

In general, you will need somewhere around 12 to 20 bass traps for a regular-sized recording room. If you have a home studio, I understand that you would not want to buy as many bass traps.

A bass trap should be atleast 4" thick with the most effective traps being as thick as 8"! - Refrain from adding extra insulation behind your bass trap panel, open air is actually better.

A bass trap is an acoustic treatment product specifically designed to treat low frequencies, i.e. the bass. These frequencies can be difficult to treat in certain rooms and are between 20 Hz and 400 Hz.

It is commonly known that bass traps should be located at the corners of rooms. The reason why is that soundwaves have the maximum velocity at the corners of rooms, therefore bass traps should be placed in the corners, as displayed in figure 1, in order to absorb the most sound energy possible.

Ethan always says that there is no such thing as too many Bass Traps. Maybe you have a low end node in your mix position giving you the impression of more bass, or maybe you've learned over the years how to compensate with your monitors.

Q: Do bass traps need to be floor to ceiling? A: Not necessarily. The most offensive bass build-up is going to be in the upper and lower corners of your room. The minimalist approach can get away with a bass trap in the upper corners of the room only; you should actually hear an improvement with just that.

Pick Thickness for Bass Players

Bass players generally use thicker picks. The thickness improves the bass playing control, and the overall tone of the string. The average pick thickness for bass players is 1.17 mm, while for guitar players is 0.89 mm. Remember, bass strings are much thicker than guitar strings.

A bass trap is a piece of acoustic treatment that is meant to absorb the lowest audible frequencies. The most efficient bass traps use a combination of two things: thickly laid sound absorbing material along with a small air gap placed behind the trap.

They make the room sound better

The short answer as to why we use bass traps comes down to the fact that they are an essential part of delivering great sound. They can make any room sound better and should be used wherever clean, accurate sound is needed.

The best bass frequencies are those between 60 and 250 Hz. For the sake of safety, it is generally recommended that the sub-base be kept at 20-60 Hz. If bass frequency is too low outside of this range, it can damage hearing. These ranges are designed to work with the majority of speakers and subwoofers on the market.

What kHz is best for bass? ›

Midrange: 500 Hz to 2 kHz

For bass instruments, this frequency range adds harmonics that can help cut through the mix. Too much around 500 Hz can make your mix sound boxy, but not enough and the track feels thin. Try boosting 700 - 900 Hz on the bass guitar to help add clarity without muddying up the low end.

Yes acoustic panels & bass traps should be placed behind speakers and surrounding walls as this helps reduce standing waves & reflective sounds that propagate from the part of the room with the highest pressure (the front) Speakers Indirectly emit low frequency from the side & rear of their cabinets – and resonances, ...

Bass builds up more strongly in the corners of your room, and most strongly in trihedral corners (wall-wall-ceiling and wall-wall-floor intersections). Technically speaking, the variation of sound pressure for all frequencies is maximum in the trihedral corners.

If the monitors are correctly placed and angled. There should never be any high frequencies that reflect off the front wall to begin with. That's one of the reasons why bass traps are placed in the front corners.

Catch and Release Bass

Some bass are best left for sport fishing, things like the Guadalupe Bass or the Choctaw Bass. These are small and not ideal for eating. Other bass species are in such small populations it is wiser to release them. That way the populations can continue to grow larger.

Bass Traps and room modes

The most effective place to add bass traps is in the corners of the room since all room modes have a pressure high or node in the corner.

Conclusion. We can hear bass through the walls better because high-frequency sound waves diminish quicker than low-frequency ones. When a sound wave propagates, the material's pressure goes up and down. This wastes the energy of the sound wave.

While midrange and high-frequency sounds are more easily enclosed by walls, low bass frequencies pass right through them.

The standard gauges for a four-string bass are 0.045 (inches thick) to 0.105, or 0.045 to 0.125 for a five-string.

Paul McCartney, Chris Squire, Roger Glover, Mike Dirnt, Matt Freeman and many others are admired for their powerful pick playing. Plenty of bassists use both methods—John Entwistle, John Paul Jones, Sting, Roger Waters and Adam Clayton all leap to mind.

Is it better to have bass string closer to pickups or farther? ›

The closer a pickup is to the strings, the better its relative ability to sense the fundamental. Adjusting a pickup closer to a string will improve its bass response, while moving it further away diminishes the fundamental and bass response with it.

We always recommend treating a room with bass traps stacked floor-to-ceiling in front and back wall-to-wall corners. But we also recommend covering ceiling-to-wall and floor-to-wall corners within a room. Basically the more corner area treated, the better the room response will be.

Low-end frequencies have very long wavelengths. These wavelengths have a lot of strength. This means that more foam is necessary to absorb these frequencies. This is why bass traps are absolutely needed in any room that is going to be used for recording, mixing or practicing.

The first point of treatment is always to target the first reflection points. These are the nearest surfaces where the sound from your speakers reflects from the wall and interferes with your ears, leading to nasty comb-filtering and phase problems.

Indoors, you can easily boost the bass by placing the speaker up against a wall or, even better, in a corner. The wall will reflect and artificially amplify the low frequencies. Outdoors, you can use this same amplification principle by placing the speaker against a low wall, for example.

One of the main arguments that audiophiles use against bass reproduction is that it can muddy up the sound. This is because low frequencies tend to mask the higher frequencies, making it more difficult to hear the detail in the music.

Remove Low-End Using A High Pass Filter

It may seem counter-intuitive, but using a high-pass filter to remove low-end from the bass can actually make the bass sound more powerful. By cutting out any unnecessary low-end, you can make more room for the bass frequencies you actually want to hear.

Bass refers to all low-frequency sounds from 20 Hz to 160 Hz on the sound frequency spectrum. It is further broken down to sub-bass, which starts from 60 Hz to the lowest frequency humans can hear—around 20 Hz. At sub-bass levels, you will feel the bass more than you'll hear it.

Music with too much bass will not do it alone. For damage you need an amp that is too powerful for the speaker. If the amp is big the speaker should be big also. If it is a good brand and has a high power rating (although these are very dubious) all should be ok.

While it certainly may work for some people and in some locations, as having an amp coupled directly to the floor often makes your bass tone feel more powerful -- in the context of a live performance, decoupling your rig by getting it even a few inches off the floor provides many benefits.

Do foam corner bass traps work? ›

Myth 2: Acoustic foam can be used as a bass trap.

The foam triangles called Bass Traps that are readily available online will provide little to no low-frequency absorption. This is due to their small size, low density, and the design being intended to sit in a corner where the velocity of sound waves is near zero.

It is well worth a read. I have recently used both 2" 703 and 3 1/2" Rockwool "Safe and Sound" for panels using essentially the same method as you're planning. The rockwool appears to have better low frequency absorption. Both are effective, easy to use and work well.

1) Corners are like cupping your hand behind your ear, so that acts as a sort of radar dish type antenna that focuses sound waves. 2) Bass tends to gather at walls because the pressure is higher there.

They are not designed to prevent sound from traveling to other rooms, or reduce outside sounds from getting in.

Building DIY acoustic panels and DIY bass traps without frames can be beneficial for a few reasons. Constructing them without wood can save money and can make for less hassle if you don't have the correct tools to work with. However, without frames, panels will have a “pillowy” look and can sag over time.

The 244 Bass Trap is designed to get well down into that range even when flat mounted on a surface. Very small rooms benefit a great deal by using 4″ absorbers (like our 244 Bass Traps) on the side walls as well. It's almost impossible to not sit in a bad modal position of the width dimension in a small space.

Low-end frequencies have very long wavelengths. These wavelengths have a lot of strength. This means that more foam is necessary to absorb these frequencies. This is why bass traps are absolutely needed in any room that is going to be used for recording, mixing or practicing.

They make the room sound better

The short answer as to why we use bass traps comes down to the fact that they are an essential part of delivering great sound. They can make any room sound better and should be used wherever clean, accurate sound is needed.

The best locations to place bass traps would be from floor to ceiling in the front left and right corners, behind the monitors and wall-ceiling tri-corners. Typical 2-inch thick fiberglass, foam or porous absorption panels that hang on your studio walls don't work effectively to absorb bass.

Filter and shape your sound

For deep bass, you're going to want to use a low-pass filter to cut out the higher frequencies of the bass notes, and then shape it with the filter and amplitude envelopes. Using the low-pass filter cutoff, we cut the higher frequencies out.

Do bass traps absorb all frequencies? ›

Bass Trapping: VELOCITY BASED ABSORPTION

Velocity based absorbers work, in short, by converting sound energy into heat, and then by absorbing and dissipating the heat. Porous absorbers typically absorb throughout most of the frequency spectrum, depending on their thickness.

Myth 2: Acoustic foam can be used as a bass trap.

The foam triangles called Bass Traps that are readily available online will provide little to no low-frequency absorption. This is due to their small size, low density, and the design being intended to sit in a corner where the velocity of sound waves is near zero.

The three most common materials that provide great results for DIY bass traps are fiberglass, rock wool, and foam, just as with regular acoustic panels designed for the upper- and mid-range frequencies. I also recommend R13 denim insulation as a low-cost, easy-to-use alternative for DIY bass traps or panels.

Indoors, you can easily boost the bass by placing the speaker up against a wall or, even better, in a corner. The wall will reflect and artificially amplify the low frequencies. Outdoors, you can use this same amplification principle by placing the speaker against a low wall, for example.