Bass traps? (to solve a suck out)


I have a terrible suck out at 61Hz. What should I do to address, I cannot move my subwoofer or room.
gchuva

Showing 5 responses by onhwy61

How broad is the width of the suckout? If it's narrow you should just ignore it. Bass traps or EQ won't help with narrow band suckouts. Try moving your listening position. Sometimes even a half foot in any direction can help.
A bass trap is a passive device that can only dissipate acoustic energy from a room. As such it can never eliminate a null in room response since it cannot add energy into the room. However, if you have two bass peaks it's possible that room traps can eliminate the peaks to generate smooth bass response. But in that case you didn't really have a bass null, but two bass peaks.

If you measure room response in narrow enough bands you'll typically find any number of very deep and very narrow nulls. As a practical matter they cannot be eliminated. Fortunately, they usually aren't a noticeable problem. Broad band nulls are a major problem. Repositioning the speaker and/or listener is the best way to address that type of problem.
Now I'm really confused, not that that is an usual state of affairs. Can bass traps solve frequency response suckouts, or not? I maintain they can't. For those who maintain that bass traps are the solution, please estimate how large a trap would be necessary to deal with the 61Hz problem in the original question.
Everyone, thanks for the info. Although I haven't tried any yet, I'm now convinced that my earlier opinion regarding bass nulls and bass traps was completely wrong.