Bass Traps

@fire_water designing a room is much like an art form.  And it's best to leave it to an artist.  Gik acoustics or others people have listed can help you figure out what works best.  Personally I found no commercial solution was going to give me what I wanted so I built giant chunk traps for my studio that are essentially floor to ceiling 24" square corner traps that are filled with R-13 insulation.  From what I understand, filling the corners with the fluffy stuff (NOT rigid corning 703 or others - those are for first reflections!!) will produce the best results. 

My bass response is incredibly flat especially after EQing a node around 25 hz (good luck trapping for 25 hz!!! - wavelengths are massive!!) - I also did the same thing for my bass soffits.  I used the chunk traps in the front and rear of the room.  It's a 16.5 x 13 x 10' ceilings room.  The larger your chunks are, the lower frequencies it will typically be able to absorb.  Best of luck to you - if you were to use REW and bounce some noise through the room, that would at least give us something to work with here in the forum.  Otherwise we have no idea how bad your bass issues truly are and how thick you need for your traps. Best of luck to you!

I actually spoke to the fine gentleman at GIK who was very helpful.  Unfortunately shipping to Canada was very expensive as he pointed out not to mention the ugly TARIFFS.  There's a very respectable company with a demo PSI AUDIO AVAA C214 they'll consider sending out to me to demo in my room if we can work out the logistics.  

@fire_water I’d want you to reach out to Vespers. Maybe he’d be free enough to do a consultation as he is in Canada.

Reach out to him here - https://vespers.ca/contact/?v=6848ae6f8e78

and here are some of his panel works in a comprehensive video - https://youtu.be/w-G9W4S7Hrg?si=hVIgr7ZjCZ9jU66-

I followed his steps roughly with iterations to match my room specifically and it has been a revelation

tcutter wrote "@kr4 can I place the PSI AUDIO AVAA C214 directly behind the couch of my sitting area or on your experience is it better to keep it upfront.  I can probably only do 1 unit now and a 2nd one later

Not likely. 

fire_water wrote: @kr4 can I place the PSI AUDIO AVAA C214 directly behind the couch of my sitting area or on your experience is it better to keep it upfront.  I can probably only do 1 unit now and a 2nd one later

Probably not.  They need to be placed where there is the highest pressure due to room modes and these are generally at boundary intersections.

@kr4 

I was inquiring as to the advantages of adding the AVAA to a distributed bass array (DBA). When I reviewed Bob Katz' Stereophile article back in 2016 (https://www.stereophile.com/content/psi-audio-avaa-c20-electronic-bass-trap), it appeared that the improvements were on the order of 2 dB or less, which seemed small in comparison to my DBA's impact. Your article (https://www.stereophile.com/content/psi-audio-avaa-c214-active-bass-trap) seems to emphasize decay times and indicate the device(s) might still be of benefit. 

I recognize you reviewed a later design, but I get the impression the performance is virtually the same and it was primarily a cosmetic move, along with a control or two.