CONTROL THE BASS IN YOUR

ROOM!
So you are a musician, mixer/master engineer and want to have that warming bass of your room hitting your
ears? Understanding how the sound behaves and how your room compact the low frequencies it will help you to
get closer of that. In this e-book we cover the principles of sound propagating indoors, tips to understand what
have been told to you about low frequency treatment and guidelines for you make a decent DIY homestudio with
good acoustics in the sub-bass and bass range.

Keep up the good work! We also have a gift for you in the end of this e-book.

Inside a room, the sound pressure at any point is a combination of the direct sound and the reflected sound. Most
rooms can be considered enclosed spaces, they are basicly containers of air. As such they exhibit modal
resonances.

But what is ressonance? Ressonance is a tendency in which the system natural responds to the excitantion energy
increasing the amplitude of the signal.

Modal resonances are tendency of the room to increase the energy

of excitation signal.

If you excite the room with a loudspeaker with a pure tone that coincides with one of the many natural
frequencies of the room, the sound it will be greatly increased because of the modal ressonance.

Think in a two ends of a closed pipe as two opposing walls of a room. What happens between these two walls, (
we don't need to take acount the reflection of the other 4 for now ) is when you reach the first natural frequency
, or the fundamental of that axis, you'll have a maximum sound pressure and zero air-particle
displacement in the corners.
As you can see above, the lowest frequency to ocupy two opposing walls have half of the wavelength. What
kinda makes sense if you look for the equation for ressonant frequencies of a closed pipe:

where n = 0,1,2,3...; and is the speed of sound. Isolating the Length of the pipe you have

You may have notice that if we increase the n, we'll obtain higher ressonant frequencies that are multiples of the
lowest frequency, or so called harmonics!

3D PIPE
Now imagine that this pipe above is a tridimensional object and we have a room. Each dimension will have its
ressonance by itself and also a combination of the 2 or 3 dimensions will form similar ressonances, and all of it
will have harmonics!

That's a lot of natural frequencies, you say. Yes! That's a lot. But don't worry, in the mixing process you deal
with a lot more, this will be a piece of cake.
Assuming that the room it is strictly rigid (0 absorption), we can derive the Helmhotz equation of the pressure
for each dimension (x, y and z) to extract modal frequencies.

Each dimension will compact soundwave that the wavelength is mutiple, and each of these soundwaves will
interfere with the soundwaves of another dimension.

The function that says what will be the modal frequency of a rectangular room is:

Where is the speed of sound in air, , and are integers that corresponds with the number of the mode
in that dimension.

Types of modes
If you calculate a mode for only one dimension, that's a axial mode.

If you calculate a mode for two dimensios, that's a tangencial mode.

And the three dimensions is the oblique mode.

Axial modes have more energy!

Because axial modes have only two traveling waves, tangencial modes have four and oblique modes have eight.

So with that information we know where to focus our treatment! Axial!

So whats the big deal with having this modal ressonances in

my room?
This ressonances are an burst of energy in specific frequencies, that will add together and cause an uneven room
frequency response due the low decays of these ressonances. Or maybe there's a lack of ressonance between two
frequencies, then the room will not boost anything in that region. Take a look this before-after treatment
frequency response of a test room.

See that gap in the first graph at 80 Hz? That a region without ressonance. That's a 30 dB gap! This can mislead
your ears when listening linear monitors.

Treating the modes for awesome BASS!

So, now that we know that the modal frequencies of our room is what causes a bad behavior of the bass, let's
treat them! But how? The goal here is have the best modal distribution possible.

Option 1. Velocity Bass traps.

Yes, velocity bass traps are good options. It is a bunch of foam, a big block of foam! Yes. Those same foams that
you see in acoustic panels. But there's a catch, its hard to absorb bellow 100 Hz. If your room have a 4 meters
length for example, than it will not be enough. You'll have modes in between 42 - 100 Hz.

You can work with these solutions just fine. There's a TON of projects of this kind bass traps in the internet,
check out our designs here!

In case you go for it, just remeber:

Place it on spots where the room have maximum air displacement!!

Option 2. Diaphragmatic Absorbers

A membrane, less foam and a air cavity is all you need.

This device will be a high Q absorber that atenuate specific frequency.

The principles of a helmholtz ressonator can be complex at first sight, but don't be afraid. In a nutshell, the
ressonator's membrane will vibrate at in a specific frequency, the sound that vibrates inside the device is trapped
in the air cavity and the foam absorb it.

The big pro about this solution is that you can cirurgicly solve your room frequency response, with less work!
Say that you found a double ressonance in 80 Hertz in you modal analysis, this will problaby cause a similar
response that you saw on our untreated test room. Ok so now we design this high Q device following this 3
steps:

1. Find the cavity deep and the surface density of the material used as membrane. You can lookup the
surface density information easily.

2. Use a least half of your cavity deep with some insulation such as glasswool, rockwool or any porous material
in the bottom of the cavity.
3. Estimate the absorption coeficient using our full version of the dinamic spreadsheet for project rooms.

Design your room from scracth? How about Bonello?

In the most times you'll encounter the following situation: You rented/bought a house and is going to build an
homestudio or some good listening envirioment, you'll adapt the room for your needs, you don't have control
about the modal distribution, but if you had?

What dimensions you choose? If you say to me what's going to be the height of the room, them some researchers
will say that your room will have good modal distribution if your Lenght and width are in this proportions:

Athor Length (m) Width (m) Height (m)

Sepmeyer 1.39 1.14 1.00

 Athor Length (m) Width (m) Height (m)

1.54 1.28 1.00

2.33 1.60 1.00

Louden 1.90 1.40 1.00

1.90 1.30 1.00

2.50 1.50 1.00

Volkmann 2.50 1.50 1.00

Boner 1.59 1.26 1.00

Also you could test this proportions your own in our fully dinamic spreadsheet that test each one of this
proportions for bonello's criteria and generate the axial mode analysis.

The Bonello's criteria is a guideline for design your studio from scratch
It work like in this 4 steps:

1. Divide your low spectrum (ending in 300 Hz is okay) in thirds of octave;

2. Sort all the modes (axial, tangencial and oblique) on this octaves;
3. The higher octave gets, it can't have lower modes than the lower octaves;
4. And one third octave can't have more than 2 coincident modes unless this third octave have at least 5 modes.

Wait a second, my room isn't rectangular

non rectagular rooms definaly going to be huge challenge, each geometry will displace the locations of the max
pressure and/or air displacement and the ressonance frequency, it's way harder to see where to put our high Q
absorptions, if not correctly placed, those devices will be a waste of money. Don't be afraid to call for a expert or
a professional that have the tools to predict the sound behaviour and bass trap and ressonators locations.

Using numeric simulations, a room response can be predict using Green's equation of sound propagation inside a
shell geometry (BEM) or a fluid geometry (FEM). Computing the autovectors and autovalues of the complex
matrix generate by the FEM simulation, acoustic engineers can point it out with precision these modal
frequencies.

If you want to see how a determined design act or how the modal frequencies behaves in your non rectangular
room, contact us.

But if you have the tools and the skill to measure your room, you can go and aim for a better RFR with trial and
error, in this case, i wish you good work. (Check out our REW guide for acoustic measures).