Bass Traps VS EQ

Dear Users,
What is the best way to treat a control room, other than the obvious foam? Some say use expensive bass traps (foam bass traps don't work), or buy and dedicate a 31 band eq to tune the room for the speakers you have and their placement. I'm doing research to make this decision, and would appreciate your opinions. Thanks....

[lpdeluxe]

Treat the room. That way you are treating the problem at the source, where the sound reflects off the wall, instead of after the fact. The EQ won't do anything useful. You may correct the anomalies at one spot and make them worse at another. I built simple bass traps from my room and the bass tightened up quite a bit.

[KX]

In short, the room frequency response anomaly
is a time (duration) problem; i.e. some frequencies are
absorbed or reflected by the room wich cause some
sounds to add togheter at some frenquency bands
while other bands are cancelled...
An EQ will correct frequency, NOT standing waves.

[Lost Studios]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by chrysb93021
"Some say use expensive bass traps (foam bass traps don't work)"

You can go to any dumspster in town with recycling next to it and build your own bass trap. The mechanics of a constructed bass trap are very simple.

The foam is expensive but you generally don't need very much. If there are any pro sound stores in your area they should have a program to tell you how much foam you need. They just need the dimensions of your room.

This site is awsome. Try it out. It has more info than you could ever need
http://johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/index.php

[sabianq]

there is a way to make a great bass trap by using cardboard construction tubes (the ones used by contractors to fill with concrete for making concrete plyons) they are usually 12 inches in diameter, 4-6 feet tall and are 1/2 inch thick. start by filling them with as much crumpled news paper as you can pack in there then staple/glue carpet around the outside of the tube. Place precut round 1/2 inch plywood "plugs" on both ends, glue in place (i use liquid nails). vola, a bass trap.
place in the corners of the room.
tip. make sure that everything is very secure and let all of the glue cure before use.

Hey, thanks everybody for your replies. I might just try those homemade tube traps, sabianq, although the research for regular tube traps from the website of the same name shows they don't absorb much below 200hz. My biggest problem is around 110hz, so I'll probably go with Ethan Winer's Real Traps. A friend has them in his studio and they are amazing.

[vulcan_dc]

Winer's traps are what i use for low freq. absorption in my studio... . they have done their job well for me... i do have problems at ultra low freq. but that could be because i did not get the right density fiber glass boards...

get yourself a 720 density board, air tight seals on the box and it should work perfect....

good luck,

[sabianq]

dont forget that a 110hz wave is 10.27 feet at 1 atm.
your bass trap would need to have a linear area squared = to wave length.
if you are using tubes, it needs to be 10 feet tall with a circumfrence of 1 foot.
you can calculate the size of your bass trap that is needed by using this webpage.

http://www.mcsquared.com/wavelength.htm

[vulcan_dc]

good website sabianq.... thanks for sharing...

cheers