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DIY Tube Traps: A Sonic Metamorphosis

Posted by bdiament (A) on April 26, 2004 at 09:42:15

For the past two years, I’ve been reading and re-reading Jon Risch’s wonderful writings on DIY Tube Traps on his Acoustic Treatments page (http://www.geocities.com/jonrisch/a.htm). I’d been wanting to build them but had reservations since I don’t have the tools or the knowledge to use them.

Several months ago, I found John Gale’s page (http://ic.net/~jtgale/diy2.htm) as well as another page
(http://www.teresaudio.com/haven/traps/traps.html) with instructions for a simpler design that I felt I could build.

Last week, a friend and I built enough of these to outfit both his recording studio, Top Of The World (http://www.topoftheworldstudios.com) as well as my own listening room which I use when mastering and editing recordings.

Since we built the traps at my friend’s place, his was the first room we heard them in. Now I don’t know how the ones we built compare with Jon Risch’s design. I do know however, the results of our efforts with the design we built. Prior to installation, my friend and I noticed how some parts of his studio had bass build-up and others had a bass suckout. Some of these locations were pretty close to each other. After completing the first 8 traps (each was 3 feet long), we installed them in the corners of his studio and immediately noticed how the bass was now even everywhere in the room. An auspicious start.

We continued our efforts for the next few days ending up with 8 16” x 6’ columns and 8 9” x 6’ columns for his room. My room required 6 16” x 6’ columns, 1 16” x 3’ column and 4 9” x 6’ columns. By the week’s end, I was sitting in my room listening to recording after recording and marveling at the changes we’d wrought.

I’ve put up many posts in this forum outlining my experience in listening to and designing devices to isolate all my gear (including the loudspeakers) from seismic vibrations. I’ve shared the specs for my Hip Joints© roller bearings and written about my design of my Enjoyyourshelf© racks. I talked about how these devices allowed my system to attain performance I’d have thought I couldn’t afford and how I was hearing previously unheard things on records I’d known since childhood.

Having been a professional audio engineer for over three decades, I’ve heard all kinds of studios and all kinds of acoustic “treatments”. I have long held the belief that ASC’s Tube Traps (http://www.tubetrap.com/) are the only treatment I’ve heard that didn’t exact some sonic price and furthermore are the only treatment I’ve heard that I would recommend. Alas, my budget doesn’t allow for a full room treatment with ASC’s devices. The good news is, with the help of the web pages mentioned above, I now have that “full room treatment”.

I’m still absorbing (no pun intended) what the traps do for the performance but I do have some preliminary impressions. Aside from the “evening out” of the sound I mentioned above, the various bumps and dips in frequency response now being absent, I’m hearing a distinct increase in dynamic response both macro and micro. Bass is “punchier”, faster, much more like bass in real life in addition to extending lower down the range. The room sound that gets recorded, be it real or a studio creation, is now much more in evidence, since the “voice” of my listening room has been effectively silenced. This is not to say my room sounds “dead”, quite the contrary, it has retained its “life” but it is now quite difficult to hear where the room boundaries are. In an untreated room, with eyes closed, it is easy to hear the size of the room. Once “trapped”, the walls have fallen away and are replaced by the acoustic of the recording space.

Perhaps the biggest, most significant change, is that it almost feels like there is a microscope on every recording I play. The feeling of being transported to the recording locale is immensely increased. My system sounds like a much more expensive system and quite a bit better than many I’ve heard that were more expensive but resided in trapless rooms.

Beside the labor, what did this cost me? I added up what I’d have to spend if I was to buy the same traps of the commercial variety and the total came to about $10,000 plus whatever shipping would add. For my DIY traps, my total expenditure for my room came to about $510. That is for 13 16” x 3’ traps and 8 9” x 3’ traps, 21 traps in all.

Some of my earlier writings suggest that you don’t know what your gear can really do until it is isolated from seismic interference. To this I’ll add that you still won’t know what it can do until it resides in a properly treated room. The money spent on seismic isolation and room trapping could not have achieved anything remotely like what I’m now enjoying if I’d spent it on equipment “upgrades” instead. As I said, I’ve heard plenty of very expensive systems and a number of them sounded pretty good. One or two sounded very, very good. Would I trade seismic isolation and room trapping for components of double or triple the price? Not a chance. Your room is indeed a critical component of your system and you hear it more than you might realize.

I owe a debt of gratitude to those who have written of their experiences with traps both commercial and especially DIY. Not only will all the records I work on now sound better (because I can better hear what they sound like) but my pleasure in listening to Music (as well as soundtracks to movies) has taken a great step upward.

So if you’re wondering what the next step is for your system, regardless of the components that comprise it, consider the biggest component, your room.

Happy Listening!
Barry

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