Serge wrote:

Looks like a good solution, this. To make the fabric-covered pipe more reflective you may spray-paint the fabric, I think.

I am playing with the tube traps and at this point I have a dual feeling about them. They are absolutely phenomenal HF absorbents, in fact much more powerful than any other tools I have heard.  They suck HF from the room with a force of a good commercial vacuum cleaner – very effective and intuitively powerful.

However, Sound that tube traps produce is a bit controversial in my view.  Tube traps are very powerful HF consumer and the need to be use VERY cautiously, it easy to over dry my room and it need some attention what and how to use the tube traps. Properly used I was able to get very nice HF balance in the room. Did it lead to better sound in my room? Hm, rather it did not. In fact for a first time during many years my room begun to sound like some kind of dealer demo room. Do you remember that generic suffocating, thin sound, with distill bass and hyper-pronounced HF on a background of monotone LF farting? That was always for me a signature of a room with tube traps and it is the direction into which the sound of my room changed. Thinking about tube traps more I conceded that they are no properly designed. That is kind of an audacious statement form a person who few days before did not even used tube traps and who has no assurance that he used them today properly. Still, I think that I am right, below is my further thinking on the subject.

Tube traps are mistakably designed as they tend to deal with a very erroneous assertion that it is possible to feel a listening room with some kind of confused and random bass and then to correct the things with tube traps. Why I say “confused and random bass”? Because this is what 99.9% people get from their standalone, off-the-self speaker with a woofer at the bottom inserted in a random room. Yes, the tube traps do deal with anomalies in the room but by doing it the very much obliterate very fragile and very delicate texture of bass. They kind if insert a very fine file of oil on surface of bass water, eating up all micro dymick of bass.  The bass become less problematic but also less impactful and less expressive. It cuts a listener skin like a dull knife – you feel that something is trying to slice you skin but you see no blood. This is very unpleasant feeling. I think the problem that tube traps has is that they are trying to do for bass and I think this is a mistake. The tube traps are super good HF consumers and this is where they need to be.

Remind you that tube traps use the fact the sound in a room create excessive pressure. The tube traps, being sealed, experience the pressure difference between the inside and outside the tube. So, it creates a “wind” from outside of the tube in order to close the low pressure zone inside of the tube. The “wind” blows across fiberglass that “eats” energy of the pressure wave. The larger tubes that lower LF will be eaten. So how to make the tube trap to eat HF but do not touch LF. Here is what I fill my des would work better – the sliced tube trap. What I think need to be done is to slice the tube trap on individual segments and make each segment to act differently. By the fact that segments are small they will not hurt LF. For HF they will act not only as consumer of HF but as smart consumer.

Look at the picture above. We have a battery of small radial sections that do not go a go very low. The segments are all different, some of the sealed and “actively” eat HF, some of them opened, some of them HF reflective, some of them semi-reflective to different degree and the have some free air space between the segments. They are all in the same axis and covered with the same final cloth. I guess this type of tube traps Shish-Kebab will work very well s it will have proper randomizing effect. It would be very interesting to talk with the folks who the tube traps but have you seen any audio manufacture who would comfortably take a criticism about own products and without acting as a psycho?

I still will proceed with my half-tube idea for the ridge wall but I will be using smaller half-paper and experimenting with reflectivity. Most likes will not completely seal them. To my surprise even not sealed they are still very effective. I do feel that there is a special signature of fiberglass HF consumption. What foam eats HF then it does not make Sound “thin” and metallic. It looks like   fiberglass does. It might be just the way how and how much fiberglass is used. I will continue to make experiments as the forth with witch fiberglass eats HF is very commendable.

Romy the Cat wrote:

Tube traps are mistakably designed as they tend to deal with a very erroneous assertion that it is possible to feel a listening room with some kind of confused and random bass and then to correct the things with tube traps. Why I say “confused and random bass”? Because this is what 99.9% people get from their standalone, off-the-self speaker with a woofer at the bottom inserted in a random room. Yes, the tube traps do deal with anomalies in the room but by doing it the very much obliterate very fragile and very delicate texture of bass. They kind if insert a very fine file of oil on surface of bass water, eating up all micro dymick of bass.  The bass become less problematic but also less impactful and less expressive. It cuts a listener skin like a dull knife – you feel that something is trying to slice you skin but you see no blood. This is very unpleasant feeling. I think the problem that tube traps has is that they are trying to do for bass and I think this is a mistake. The tube traps are super good HF consumers and this is where they need to be. Remind you that tube traps use the fact the sound in a room create excessive pressure. The tube traps, being sealed, experience the pressure difference between the inside and outside the tube. So, it creates a “wind” from outside of the tube in order to close the low pressure zone inside of the tube. The “wind” blows across fiberglass that “eats” energy of the pressure wave. The larger tubes that lower LF will be eaten. So how to make the tube trap to eat HF but do not touch LF. Here is what I fill my des would work better – the sliced tube trap. What I think need to be done is to slice the tube trap on individual segments and make each segment to act differently. By the fact that segments are small they will not hurt LF. For HF they will act not only as consumer of HF but as smart consumer.ontinue to make experiments as the forth with witch fiberglass eats HF is very commendable. Rgs, Romy the Cat

PS: btw in your last pic of your room with pipe fiberglass they just look like asc tube traps .. or are they just them ?

Regardz
  unicon 

unicon wrote:

Roman, It is interesting to see you using your pipe in room. You mentioned its wrong to use them as LF consumer. You got it somehow wrong 1-sealed tube traps can absorb LF and yet again absorb all HF in the same time... 2- the problematic sound that you experienced like cutting your white skin with knife is all made by your wrongly used method .it is due to the unwanted vibration of fiber glass pipes .

unicon wrote:

…sealed tube traps can be implemented the way to not absorb LF easy and just in case the pressure gets over high and they can yet to be remain fully customized to absorb and diffuse what you want them for .

unicon wrote:

…I am not  entering the subject that many like the room to sound much bigger and like the room sound. I honestly suggest to use the ASC made tube traps or just simply borrow some and experience with them.

unicon wrote:

PS: btw in your last pic of your room with pipe fiberglass they just look like asc tube traps .. or are they just them ?

Romy the Cat wrote:

unicon wrote: …sealed tube traps can be implemented the way to not absorb LF easy and just in case the pressure gets over high and they can yet to be remain fully customized to absorb and diffuse what you want them for . I do not think that you are corrects. They can be turned to absorb or diffuse FM but they always form for LF. I do not think that there a way to moderate tube traps LF impact besides moving them around and changing the tube diameter. Pussy.

Unicon, can you explain what do you mean and how and what for the acoustic impedance need to be used. I read the articles at tubetrap

http://www.tubetrap.com/

and I do underrated what is the acoustic impedance is.

http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/z.html

What I do not underrated is way I need to be involved in all of it if I experience no problem with bass and no need for tube traps to intervene with my bass. In my view tube trap for bass is like stomach treating medication after one eats wrong food. No one question that those medications help but also if you do not eat bad food then there is no need for medications.

I do feel hat tube traps are very potent HF observer and here is what I would like to learn to use them effectively and creatively, with respect to what I would like to accomplish.

unicon wrote:

It is right that when you do not have bass problem then why to do any absorption for it ... But how do you know you do not have any problem ?

unicon wrote:

if you think you do not need to go below 150hz then just try to make your tube fiberglasses well structured from within and covered hardly from outside.

I do not know how you feel if you have large glass surface in your listening rooms but in my room if I have any exposed balls then I instantly feel that something is terribly wrong with sound. It is kind of ironic as when I was buying this house I did appreciate the fact that wall behind the speakers will be transparent. However, when I begin to experiment with playback in this new room I concluded that exposed glass is terminal for the why how I hear Sound. I wonder: if is there any way to deal with the problem? I can lift up my blinds but then I have to open the French doors. It works great so far but it will not be an option during cold season. So, is any glass treatment that would make it still visually-transparent and let me to have fan seeing the Massachusetts snow but at the same time to be acoustic-wise not such aggressive?

I was looking around trying to see what people use and to my surprised I did not see people alerted to the glass problem. My glass is many feet behind the loudspeakers line and it does horrors. This guy from Sound Africa:

… has his large glass window right the zone of the first reflection, on the side of the horn mouth. In my view it is absolutely atrocious configuration and it look like the guy spend no effort to deal with this glass. Ah, I forgot, the HF from Goto driver does not reflect… The image is taken from here:

http://audioheritage.csdco.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?20880-Mid-range-driver-advice-needed

I was thinking about some kind of cage or a few inch deep screens that might be hanged before glass on winter to acoustically cure the glass reflections. Did anybody  see anybody work on this problem?

Hi Romy.

Why trying to reinvent the wheel? Everything about room treatment and room accoustics has been said and done. By a guy totally in the know and offering his advice and his tools on his website. Michael Green does NOT damp, diffuse, trap or whatever the "old school" approaches are. He TUNES rooms and audio-gear like instruments are TUNED to make real music come alive...

This should be worth your consideration.

http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/forum.htm

bernie_f wrote:

Hi Romy. Why trying to reinvent the wheel? Everything about room treatment and room accoustics has been said and done. By a guy totally in the know and offering his advice and his tools on his website. Michael Green does NOT damp, diffuse, trap or whatever the "old school" approaches are. He TUNES rooms and audio-gear like instruments are TUNED to make real music come alive... This should be worth your consideration. http://tuneland.techno-zone.net/forum.htm best wishes for your project bernie

In my case I use empirical consequence and empirical demands of my actual Sonic results and if in some cases I do reinvent the wheel then… then I do not care. Why shall be bothered but the fact that reinvent the wheel if I act in according with my own understanding?  If I do reinvent a wheel then it will be my wheel and I will ride on my wheels my own carriage.  I do it not to sell wheels, not to declare ownership of the wheel concept but for no other reasons then make my own carriage to ride smoother. If so, the why do I care who reinvented the wheel?

Regarding Michael Green.  Bernie, can you explain in a few words what he is saying and what he is doing? I have read this character before and since you mention him I read a few his posts again. I truly do not get what he is doing and even what is trying to do. It looks like he does very rudimental and banal things and then and them with fancy names “tuning”, “optimization”, “harmonization” etc…  His posts that promised practical steps offer no tangible practicality, no methodology but rather very basic and very simplistic things. Perhaps I did not read what I need to read but from what I read I did not detect any “wheels” in what Michael Green saying.  Would question the notion of tuning audio-gear “until real music come alive” but I did not see that Michael Green saying anything practical or original on the subject. My Cat rolls from one side to another and by doing it she can fee that she creates a world economical crisis, bit I do not think she does. I do not day that Michael Green is a buffoon but in what I have seen/read I did not detect any  substance in his comments that would make me feel that he “tunes” anything or offer any “new school" approach. I might be mistaken, please show me that I am wrong.

zanon wrote:

I know that because of your new mid bass horn, the speaker position is mostly fixed. So you move chair. I am wondering -- to those of us who can move both chair and speaker, how do you go about getting system to play the room? Do you place speaker where you think it may be best and then move chair around? Or do you sit where you want and then move speaker?

Actually in my case the speakers position is not fixed. The mid bass horn is fine and this is the only one element that can’t be moved. The Macondo islands and the chair are perfectly can move.

There are however some constrains. For instance I would like to keep Macondo islands as far as possible from back wall. I would like to have the Macondo islands to be spread as wide as possible but without deformation of center image. I would like the chair to be equidistant between crossover altered midbass and the rest MF channels. There are many other constrains and wishes. Sure putting up room treatment and by other means the critical listening position might be adjusted and it will be adjusted but the main skeleton will be pretty much remain.

For those who both chair and speaker I would advise to find one stationary objects. For me in most of the case it is the back wall of the speaker when I know how far my speaker needs to be from there. This would give to you the base line for the speaker. Everything comes from there. You know your base line, you know your spread of the R/L channels, so you know more or less your listening distance. In many way it is back and forth ceremony….
The Cat

I think my new room and new midbass horn will give me an opportunity to play at the NEW LEVEL with a notion that I have been chasing for years. I am taking about perceptual shrinking of frequency response. I need to admit that most of the ugliest character of most of the loudspeakers out there is that they are not that full range acoustic system but each not then produce then try to spread it in a widest possible range. That artificial virtual extension of range, combined with dymick deficiency and tonal restrain is very unpleasant to my ears. Year back I call it Porcupine Sound but very few understood what it meant.

What I am trying to do is sort of reverse the situation and to make a truly wide range he plays to play mostly midrange. Partially I was able to accomplish in my old room and there are some reference about it in the following thread

http://www.romythecat.com/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=13585

.. but I think the new room will take it further as the longer reverberation time in my new room is such a power tool to keep lower MF longer! I would need to think about all of it when I will put the acoustic treatment on the wall and when I will set up the new Macondo balance.

What I listen live orchestra from the sites where orchestra (that is certainly is able for stupendous wide range) is more or less properly balanced, I mostly do not hear audio extremes but rather IMPLICATION OF EXTREMES.  Yes, I do understand that most of the recordings are unfortunately done with microphones located much closer than any sane listening distance for live listening. However, I to advocate the Morons who record music to use “dummy head” approach is too long and the people who do recording it too spoiled with wrong ideas about recordings. What however they do not have fortunately control is how sound done in my room. This anti-porcupinenees or the anti-Magico/Kharma Sound is perfectly achievable by balancing sound on playback level.  I think my new room will give to me more options to do it then my old room.