Also this site provides some good lessons and a weekly newsletter that pumps out some good information. They obviously show a bias to tube traps. ASC Hifi - High End Listening Rooms
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Yup. I’m somewhat of an ASC TubeTraps fan myself as the pics suggest. In fact it was the paradigm shifting experience of first hearing an Art Noxon designed listening room treated by Tube Traps back in the mid 1980’s which inspired my life long interest in small room acoustics and acoustic treatments. By the way, each Tube Trap sports an aforementioned poly-cylindrical diffuser running down one side of the cylinder.
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I built some bass traps over 25 years ago, and just now discovered how tuneable and affective they are at controlling the bass. When I built them I wrapped plastic around half of the diameter of the clinder, before adding the finishing fabric to help dial in the high frequencies, by rotating them and exposing more or less of the reflective surface. With most speakers I’ve owned I wanted to control the bass, and reduce high frequency reflections, so I rotated them so the reflective side was facing the inside corner and the bass absorbing side was facing outward.
With the introduction of some new input tubes for my BHK 250, the bass has become a little to promident, even with pulling the speakers out further from the front wall, so I decided to experiment with rotating the bass traps so absorbing side faces the inside corner instead of outward. When I did so the bass actual became too anemic, so ended up splitting the difference and was able to dial the bass in perfectly.
All threse years I assumed that the bass traps would work more affective at absorbing bass if the absorbent side was facing the back of the speaker instead of the inside corner. Makes total sense because the bass becomes stronger the closer you get to the inside corner.
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@Gary_M interesting post. I discovered something similar with my 'stats since they like some reflection of the higher frequencies from the back radiating surface. I have GIK Tri-Trap corner bass traps with their “range limiter” feature which is similar in function to your plastic wrap. What’s also interesting is that GIK states the range limiter also increases the effectiveness of the bass trapping function.
I was wondering about that myself. Facing the more absorbent side to the inside corner definitely soaks up more bass, but then the range limiter, or in my case the plastic wrap, helps to reduce some of the bass from escaping.
Hi Gary, thanks for keeping the thread alive. Since I was the one who started it, I will give an update to my project. I had a sauna to build first and just finished that, so I’m starting on my room treatments. A big shout-our is due to @MTB_Vince for incredible advice in what I should do with my small room. Basically I’m building bass traps in every corner and along where the ceiling meets the walls. Then I’m building several different types of acoustic panels - absorbers and/or diffusers - and experimenting with their placement. I’m also going to play with adding panels of pegboard on some of the bass traps to not deaden everything. So the idea is to create a lot of modular components I can move around, add things to, etc… It’s going to be an interesting project.
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“Subscribed”!
I first came across 7Audio when Lukasz was initially advertising on Ebay. These days I reach out via PM to his Fb page Redirecting... or via email. If you PM me I’ll provide you with the latter @ErVikingo
Hey Vince, I just wanted to give you a quick update on my progress treating my dedicated (but small) sound room. As I told you in an email, when I first fired up my system in the untreated room, I was horrified - I’m not sure I’ve EVER heard something sound so bad. But you told me to persevere, so I held my nose and moved on. The bass traps are done - not covered, so it looks like the bowels of hell, but I decided to hook it back up and see what happened. OMFG - it immediately, with no further treatments (I even forgot to throw down a rug), it sounds better than any system I have ever owned. This is all just rough placement (I’m using Paul McGowan’s new book on The Loudspeaker) and even without much of anything, I’ve got a great soundstage, imaging beyond my speakers, speakers disappeared. I have no doubt the new M1200 mono blocks are doing wonders, but I have never heard so much improvement from the same set of speakers. I’ve got lots more to do - the room is too small, so I’ve got more bass to deal with, panels, ceiling, and moving stuff around. But right out of the gate, your help has been so appreciated. Thank you so much! For any of you who don’t believe that treatments can add $thousands to the quality of a modest system, you have GOT to try. Can’t remember where, but I recently saw a priority list of expenditures and room treatments was higher than speakers. I’m a believer.
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And just like that, another room acoustics heathen becomes a believer! 
Thanks for the kind words @JLawry and keep at it. It will only get better.
Be well,
Vince
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I cant figure out how to message you BUT Lukazs responded to me on FB! I might be bother you with a couple of questions. Your room looks awesome.
Thanks, Juan a fellow MTBr
Thank you creating another room treatment disciple. I tell my audio buddy’s that if they have spent over $5k on cables they should probably spend the same amount on treatments before they by any more cables
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Hey Vince,
Well, it’s finally finished (for now at least). Your time and quality advice were really valuable and practical for me getting the best bang for my work and money. The sound is better than I could have imagined. OK, yeah, I did upgrade my amp (PSA M1200) and turntable and cartridge, but no way did those alone change the whole nature of what I listen to. Below are some highlights from a show-and-tell PDF I put together that might help others see how this can be done relatively cheaply - yeah, it was a bit of work, but what a difference! If anyone here would like to see the PDF, message me here and we can trade emails.
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Thanks for sharing your project. It’s inspiring! It really must be (and sounding) rewarding. I will be looking into acoustic improvements myself, although these won’t go at the length you took.
Probably nobody needs to go to the lengths I went, but I can honestly say that everything I did had a sonic effect. Sort of the same thing as with components and peripherals - if you change out you speaker cables OR interconnect cables OR power cables, you might not notice, but when you do all three, you notice. So was it the dedicated AC or the soundproofing or the internal treatments that made the biggest difference? The answer is yes.
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