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| This photo shows part of Bob Katz's
mastering room at his Digital Domain studio. Only two of
his MondoTraps are visible. More are in other corners, and three are hidden behind the
curtain. Click the image for a larger version. |
"The
bass response has smoothed out measurably and audibly and there's not a bass note out of
place!"
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MONDOTRAPS
REVIEW BY BOB KATZ The acoustics of my mastering room
have been in continuous "development" since 1996. If I can find an improvement
that makes the sound more linear, natural, dynamic and musical, I'm all for it. Last week
I got a new listening couch and the sound became a bit too bright. But this was not caused
by a change in absorption; I had to restore the tonal balance by simply raising the new
couch two inches to put the listener's ears back on the mid-axis of the Lipinski
loudspeakers. So the room is in continuous development. The sound quality and frequency
response linearity is now an A+, thanks to the addition of some RealTraps MondoTraps.
Prior to the addition of the MondoTraps, I only had some acoustic
treatment to control flutter echo as well as spending much time on careful placement of
the subwoofers using time-domain analysis, and using tricks with the phase control of the
subwoofer to cancel a slight bass hump due to the room geometry. But eventually I reached
the limit of that approach and I sought out other ways to further smooth the bass
response. That's where RealTraps come in,
specifically the MondoTraps from RealTraps.
Designer/owner Ethan Winer was extremely helpful in helping me choose the number and
placement of traps. Cautiously, I started with three and then I was hooked. Currently I
have seven MondoTraps. In this picture you can see the two left-hand ones, and the two
right-hand ones are bilaterally symmetrical. Plus three behind the curtain. The bass
response has smoothed out measurably and audibly and there's not a bass note out of place!
Plus, the sweet spot has grown - where before I had to sit in a very narrow spot, now I
can lean forward and backward on the couch by a couple of feet without perceiving a big
change in bass response. And now you can stand against the back wall and actually enjoy
listening without hearing too much thump, so the front-to-back room mode has been greatly
attenuated. I'm sold, you've gotta do it!
There's no such thing as a free lunch, of course, all of this should be done with careful
measurement, and acoustic consultation. You may need to add some diffusion on top of the
absorption if the high frequency decay curve becomes too sharp.
--Bob Katz, June 12, 2006 |
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