Recording - October 2014 - 8

Note to faithful writers: When sending your letters by email,
please remember to include your name and where you hail from.
More on Brian Lucey's RealTraps
The September 2014 issue is great. I ripped out a bunch of the articles to save for future reference. And I was excited to see the interview
with Brian Lucey, where he mentions RealTraps Modular Kits. I'm a
fan of RealTraps and Ethan Winer. So imagine my disappointment at
the lack of photos-although I see Brian sitting on a Swopper chair,
which I've been thinking of getting. I even went to the Magic Garden
website, but no sign of the RealTraps. Shame shame shame. The
RealTraps website is very informative, but I want to see pictures of the
Modular Kits in action at Magic Garden. Cough 'em up!
Joan Bull
via email

Hi Joan! Believe me, you're not alone in that. But even the
author, who works for RealTraps, had nothing to offer; the space
is sorely undocumented with respect to photography. We did the
best we could under the circumstances, which in this case was one
very nice photo that didn't have any acoustical details in it.
The situation was complicated by the fact that we had to present usable information without it turning into a RealTraps advertorial piece. Readers can smell that sort of thing a mile away and
it becomes a trust issue. James was very understanding and I
think his article struck a good balance between mentioning his
brand and providing good information that was of general use.
If you'd like, I can forward your email to James and see if he can
provide at least a description of how the Modular Kits were set
up? Many thanks for the compliments and thanks for reading.-
MM
Joan replied:
Yes, I'd like to see more info from James or maybe he could post
something on the RealTraps web site? And I can understand the balancing act required in the article. Thanks!-JB
And James Lindenschmidt of RealTraps offered:
Hello Joan, Jim at RealTraps here. Thanks for writing in. I'm glad
you liked the article! Brian's room is great, it is a very fine evolution of our Modular Kit design. I agree the picture Brian supplied
doesn't exactly highlight the RealTraps Modular Kits, though they
are in the picture! They are what makes up the black background.
In print, the photo was darker than I expected, which obscures
them even more.
The Modular Kits are an evolution of our product line; once we
realized our 6" thick panels with the metal frames were thick
enough to stand upright on their own, the Modular Kit concept was
born. The concept is explained in detail in the following "Hearing Is
Believing" video on our website: realtraps.com/video_hearing.htm
The basic idea is to maximize bass trapping in the corners, use
high-frequency absorption at the reflection points on the side
walls, and then Diffusor Modules everywhere else around the

perimeter of the room. We expected great performance when we made the above video, but the
results exceeded our expectations, particularly at
the very even RT60 time across the frequency
spectrum (meaning all frequencies have nearly
the same reverb time in the room).
To this day our Modular Kit approach remains
our Gold Standard, as it were; it can turn nearly
any room into a world-class listening environment, in the sense that a $10k-20k investment in
room treatment (for most rooms, might be more
for a very large room) can yield sound rivaling a
million-dollar control room, designed and built
from the ground up for superior sound.
Give the above a video a look, and let me know
if you have additional questions.-JWL

And speaking of chairs...
This is just one of several letters we received
after our September 2014 issue came out, all asking the same question:
Hello Malcolm: In your "Ten Steps For Setting Up
Your Studio" article in the September 2014 issue of
Recording, you lead off with a high-backed, fully
articulating leather office chair and you include a
picture.
That chair looks and sounds like one I've looked for
myself. I especially liked the idea of the arms that
pivot up and out of the way, as I'm a guitar player.
Can you tell me the manufacturer and the model?
I'd like to order one. Thanks,
Mike Bratt
via email

Malcolm Doak replies:
Hi Mike. The Chair is from Staples. It is the
Torrent™ Chair, Model # 20224. The UPC Code is
7 18103 1428 8. Thanks for reading!-MD

Correction
An error sneaked past the Editors and the factcheckers at elysia in our July 2014 review of the
xfilter. In that review, Paul Vnuk Jr. mistakenly
referred to the Passive Massage feature as a lowcut filter, when in fact it is a lowpass filter with a
resonant peak of roughly 12 kHz that falls off
above 17 kHz.-MM

Write to us at: Talkback, Recording Magazine, 5408 Idylwild Trail, Boulder, CO 80301
Or save stamps and send email to talkback@recordingmag.com
8

RECORDING October 2014

http://www.realtraps.com/video_hearing.htm

Recording - October 2014

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