# Generic Foam bass traps



## Guest

Thinking about adding some bass traps to your room? Curious about the effectiveness of the inexpensive bass traps from generic foam vendors?

Here are the results I got from using 8 of the corner units in my room. The tan trace is without traps, purple trace is with traps. Units are roughly 1'x1'x2' triangular prisms as shown in photo. (The convolutions nest, so there is 8 cu.ft. of foam, total). Room is 14'x10'x8', speakers are mini-monitors (thus the 60Hz rolloff). 4 units were placed around the room in trihedral corners when easy (as in, when there were convenient bookshelves or accessible floor corners), other 4 in dihedral corners.

$70 for 8 traps seemed like a good price - cheaper than 2 of the name brand alternative and much cheaper than some of the more reputable non-foam panels. Also, being 1' on a side they are much easier to place than larger panels. Too bad they don't do much. I'm sending mine back.

FYI,
Ron


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## bpape

Yup - unfortunately they're not doing much. The smaller size isn't helping any either. Bass just takes size. Bass waves are huge. Add in a far less than optimal absorbant material (even for foam) and, well you see what it does and doesn't do. Below 60Hz, they'll do nothing.

Bryan


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## Ethan Winer

SleepingRobot said:


> Curious about the effectiveness of the inexpensive bass traps from generic foam vendors? ... $70 for 8 traps seemed like a good price


In this case you get what you pay for. See my Fraud Report:

www.ethanwiner.com/fraud.html

--Ethan


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## Woochifer

This is all great information because I've been looking into various bass trap options, including the Auralex LENRD foam traps. These lookalikes have always seems suspect to me, but I had not read any testimonials as to whether they worked or not.


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## bpape

The LENRDs are a far better product than the cheap foam. That said, they're still inferior in the deep bass to an appropriate fiberglass or mineral wool solution yet more expensive.

Bryan


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## Ethan Winer

Woochifer said:


> These lookalikes have always seems suspect to me, but I had not read any testimonials as to whether they worked or not.


I'd be skeptical of testimonials because too many people are too easily fooled. All the time I see praise reviews in magazines by professional reviewers of products I know for a fact cannot possibly work, yet there's the testimonial. I also see customer testimonials all the time on the web sites of vendors selling obvious snake oil. In fact, when all a vendor has is testimonials, but no science or lab tests, I'm even more skeptical. :rolleyesno:

Of course, all the testimonials on _my company's web site_ are exempt. :rofl:

--Ethan


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## Guest

Woochifer said:


> This is all great information because I've been looking into various bass trap options, including the Auralex LENRD foam traps. These lookalikes have always seems suspect to me, but I had not read any testimonials as to whether they worked or not.


Glad to be able to help by providing a small amount of real data. I hope it is useful to others in the future.

By the way, I should say that dealing with the vendor in question has been painless so far. It was easy to order from them, they shipped promptly, and have promised a full refund (less shipping, of course). Too bad their traps are ineffective. So I am out the shipping expense, but have learned some things, and it was not too expensive a lesson.

Best regards,
Ron


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