Just got 4 real traps, Barely hear the difference?

crimsonhawk47

New member
2x2 Minitraps. Strapped across 3 wall to wall to ceiling corners, can't hear a difference at all between them and my auralex. I won't be able to test it again until saturday. What's up with this? Am I just putting it in the wrong place?
 
I just used various things to prop them up since I'm leaving for a wedding tomorrow morning, and I'll be back saturday.

I really am not hearing it. I thought maybe I did as I was playing Zodiac shit by Flying Lotus but I took them back down and didn't really notice anything.

Is the problem that I'm playing mixes that already translate and I need to play some of my own stuff?

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be methodical on saturday

try placement of each trap in the mid portion of each vertical corner at the front and then place one in the mid portion of the short wall ceiling interface. Do the same along the back wall too.

then adjust each trap (one at time) until you can notice a difference. Remember to use a test tone that is as close to the resonant frequency of each of the tangential modes - maybe use the signal generator in pro tools at -40dBfs to generate sine wave at the required freqs

if you send me the room measurements (again I think) I can do the math for each mode or you could go to amroc - the room mode calculator make sure you select feet before entering your measurements. It will also generate a tone for each mode. There are three heights given for modes. You want to look at the ones that are 2/3 the height of the biggest. You will see the correct mode selected by looking at the room model (where it shows the pressure zones for each mode in Blue and Red).

Any questions just ask
 
I guess I'll get a second person to help adjust on the fly without being in front of the speakers.

Would there be any particular reason I couldn't hear a difference that I should keep in mind?

Also, is filtered pink noise generally frowned upon as a test? I was having a hard time finding bass build ups in my room with it.

Edit: I'm getting concerned about my own hearing. I was just watching an interview with Drake's Producer who said the song Headline's was compressed, squashed, and distorted to all hell.

I pulled up the song on my monitors and...Couldn't really tell at all. I could tell that there aren't really dynamics to that song, but I didn't notice any big, noticeable distortion. I'm concerned maybe I need to deep clean my ears or something.
 
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pink noise is usually used to balance your system and set overall levels (never filter it imo)

that drake track is compressed heavily and distorted (but it is subtle, the distortion that is) - to someone who worked on it would be obvious as, less so to mere mortals and causal listeners who are listening to compromised formats (mp3/mp4/aac/etc) through design compromised earbuds/headphones

as for why you might not hear a difference, the room modes may not be being excited by the material you are using, this is why I am suggesting sine tones at the exact frequency/pitch of the room mode
 
In a sense, if I use several songs and I will only be able to hear the difference through calculated sine tone tests, doesn't that defeat the point?

One of Winer's team told me to use room eq wizard or their filtered pink noise and my thought was "Why would I care if a program says the room is flattening out if I can't hear a difference anyway? My mixes will sound the same."

But I'll give that sine tone a test on Saturday.
 
using eq wizard is a con in my books - you are eq'ing your system to your rooms response rather than treating your room - sure it will let you do mixes that are flat in terms of an ideal response but at what cost to your perception of phase and stereo coherence?

the thing with treatment is that it gets incredibly tricky in small rooms to notice a difference unless the room modes are going to be excited by normal program material.

that said, notes that are within 1 quarter tone of the mode may still cause some resonance to build - it is the continuation of reflections/reverberation in this frequency range that are the reasons to put bass traps and other broad band absorbers in your room
 
Bandcoach has some awesome advice here. Very much so the voice of reason.May I just ask, how long did it take you to get it to the point where you took the picture of your new set up with the traps? Did you do it with the thoughts of treating the corners or was it a much slower process??
 
It was just thoughts of treating the corners in fact.

You can also sort of see that half the ceiling has big 9 inch slots around 2 feet wide. I have some rigid fiberglass and I figured I'd treat the ceiling with that wrapped in burlap, and then treat the corners with the realtraps.
 
So me and my Dad first started off with that room calculator, but I didn't see a setting for rooms that weren't a rectangular prism, so I only really got the rough settings. 10.5x11.5x8 ft.

We started off playing all the tones, moving traps around. Nothing even remotely felt different.

So then we decided to play a few songs that were bass heavy, but in different keys. We ended up on the second half of Massage Situation - Flying Lotus. I sat in the listening position and closed my eyes while dad moved the trap around. The only time I obviously noticed anything was when he would have a trap right by my ear.

So then we set up a mic. A Sennheiser MK4. Put it in the listening position and we recorded about 5 minutes of moving the bass traps around. A few times we had to step in front of the speakers, but we remember which times those were. Other than that, we really didn't notice a difference. I did notice, however, the room sounds pretty damn live. Maybe I do need to build these fiberglass panels since Ethan's reflect higher frequencies.

What we did was pretty extensive. Corners, ceiling slots, behind the mic, over the speakers. No real difference was heard. The mic never moved and we never changed any gain settings.
 
I've seen of these series and it really helped me to notice what you really need to provide a good sound treatment studio
 
I forgot to reply what I ended up doing, and i don't want to leave anyone in the dark.

Essentially the Realtraps I bought weren't the big enough kind to absorb the real low end issues, but they reflecting the crazy high end issues I had.

I ended up installing fiberglass in the ceiling "shelves" if you will. This was covering a lot of low end issues. It made my room more focused and I was actually better able to hear the issues still present. And while there was some low end issues, I was really dealing with crazy high end. Maybe that was from the low frequency standing waves affecting the whole spectrum as we discussed, but even mono out of one speaker, the room was phasey as hell. So I'm going to install a lot more fiberglass. My mixes have definitely gotten better with the few I've installed.
 
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