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for the length and width of the room and the first one for the ceiling. Notice there are a couple of pairs of frequencies that are a bit too close to one another for comfort, so we expect to have extra bass reinforcement at around 90 Hz and 145 Hz. The room isn’t heavily treated and can be noticeably bassy, requiring that I check my mixes in other rooms before I sign off on them. Now, I don’t have measuring equipment to shoot my room and determine the precise difference in bass response in my listening position the MegaTraps caused, but in subjective terms it was audible and it was drastic. In fact, to my admittedly novice ears it was too much! I experimented a bit and determined that I had the nicest bass balance and the bestsounding mixes with only four MegaTraps in place; six was just too much. But with those four, the improvement in my mixes was dramatic, and the improved sound of the room was evident even to non-professionals visiting the space. Final thoughts RealTraps makes a lot of different bass trapping products. Some mount permanently to walls and ceilings, hang in corners, or are free-standing or on rollers for use as movable “gobos”. There are even “spousefriendly” solutions like Guilford MiniTraps,

wall-mounted bass traps in a variety of highquality colored fabric coverings, or the Planter Bass Trap, a corner planter (complete with optional artificial plants if you want) that can help control room bass. When I asked Ethan about reviewing the Planter Trap, a small and portable product with wide application to many rooms that might have to do double duty as listening or living spaces in addition to studio work, his reply was delightfully candid: “With the Planter Bass Traps, there’s a difference that is audible but subtle, that you appreciate over time living with them. I want you to have something that makes you immediately say, ‘Wow, what a difference!’.” So we went with the MegaTraps, and yeah, it was definitely a “Wow” experience. Why am I ending this review of a RealTraps product by mentioning other products by the same company? Because the MegaTraps are the most effective trapping solution RealTraps sells, but you have to counter their ease of installation and their trapping power with the fact that they take up a lot of space. At a very rough estimate, two stacks of MegaTraps eat about as much square footage as a full-sized refrigerator (if you were to saw a fridge in half diagonally, that is). My studio serves multiple uses in my house, and there are many times when I

need to move my equipment out of the way so the room can be repurposed. (Yes, that means breaking down and rebuilding my studio on an irregular basis. Welcome to my world.) When my family needs that room, there’s no way I can sacrifice the square footage that would be taken up by the MegaTraps; as well as they worked for my room, keeping them in there simply wasn’t an option, and I regretfully had to send them back. But there are ways to combine smaller traps for equal effectiveness, and if you don’t have space for MegaTraps, check out the RealTraps product line and email them from their Contact page if you have questions about what might work best for your room. The MegaTraps were well-built, nicely finished, and did their job with enthusiasm... if you have room for them, they may be the best bass control system you can buy short of a custom solution built by a hired engineer. Price: $249.99 each and sold in pairs; the four that treated my room would cost just under $1000, not including shipping. Quantity discounts available for purchases of 8 or more units. More from: RealTraps, www.realtraps.com

http://www.realtraps.com http://www.greatriverelectronics.com http://www.greatriverelectronics.com

Recording - June 2011

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