How To Acoustically Treat Low Bass Frequencies

Aug 29, 2022

Many of my students have asked me specifically how to treat low bass frequencies in your room. Low frequencies are the hardest to tame and can cause the most problems in your home recording studio. In this article I am going to go over how to treat low frequencies and give you an overview of all the options for targeting low frequency problems at specific frequencies. Let's dive in!

The Difference Between Velocity Based Absorbers and Pressure Based Absorbers

There are two general types of bass traps, velocity based absorption and pressure based absorption. Most acoustic panels you hang on your wall with insulation and fabric are velocity based absorption. They work by transferring sound into heat. The sound hits the panel and is absorbed into the insulation and then converted into heat thus reducing or eliminating the sound reflection back in the room.

Pressure based absorbers work by creating a sealed air cavity that creates a spring and thus traps the bass frequencies in the cavity. These absorbers can be tuned to specifically target certain bass frequencies are are thus better to use once you have already used general broad band bass treatment, but still have some problem frequencies you need to tame.

How To Treat Your Recording Studio For Broadband Bass Problems

Every room will have bass build up in each of the four corners of the room. Therefore, we put broadband bass traps in each of the four corners to reduce or eliminate that build up of bass. It is best to put your bass traps from floor to ceiling so you maximize reducing all of the bass in each corner. The trihedral area in both the top and bottom of your corners is where the most bass build up occurs. This is where the floor and two walls meet and where the ceiling and two walls meet.

You can build your own bass traps and I have a great video on how to do this here: How To Build Your Own Bass Traps

You can also buy bass traps and I really like the company GIK Acoustics. You can check them out here: GIK Acoustic Bass Traps

TEST Your Room Acoustics

After you set up your broad band bass traps you can test your room acoustics using the software: Room EQ Wizard (REW). By using room acoustic software you can see what problem frequencies still exist in your room. This will help us choose the right bass traps in the next section.

Pressure Based Absorption

Once you know what frequencies you need to treat you can get different bass traps called tuned traps, sealed traps, resonant absorbers or narrow band absorbers to target those specific problem frequencies in your room.

I would recommend buying these panels since they are a bit harder to build then broadband bass traps. However you can make your own and Rod Gervais has some design options in his book: Home Recording Studio Build It Like The Pros.

I also recommend checking out GIK for some of their tuned bass traps here: GIK Tuned Traps.

Conclusion

Start with broadband bass traps and see how your room sounds. Nine times out of ten your room will sound great with just the broadband traps in each of the four corners. If you still want a more attenuated bass response then you can look into tuned traps to target the problem frequencies in your room. I recommend buying acoustic traps, but you can build your own if you have the tools. Check out this video to learn how to build your own bass traps - How To Build Your Own Broadband Bass Traps.

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