I was thinking of cutting the walls prior to painting for some inset traps just at my main reflection points. I plan on putting two paintings at at these points anyways. My question is, will the painted canvas defeat the purpose of the absorbent trap hidden behind it to levels where it isn't worth it? I'm not concerned enough to bother with traps if the paintings are not a good cover. The art was a nice and generous surprise made specifically for the HT room so I'll be using them one way or the other.

I'm interested in the answer. I took several framed pieces in my room and removed the glass, and added insulation behind the print. Not sure if it works, so hopefully some can give us an answer about the reflective property of painted canvas or paper.

This is getting complicated. The more I read on Ethan’s page, the more confused I get. My lil project is on hold till I can figure this crap out a bit better. I’m not even sure I can use the fabric I bought. Ethan says you should be able to blow threw the fabric with relative ease. The stuff I bought takes effort. So if I use it, it will reflect high frequencies. Not sure if I want that to happen, it doesn’t sound good.

There’s deep bass, mid bass, high bass, mid-high frequencies. All require different trap building techniques.

What did I get myself into…………

Ditto.

OK, back on.....

I just got this from Ethan.

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Corner bass traps are out of the way of direct reflections, so they should have the paper/foil facing toward the room. This absorbs more bass, and avoids sucking out all the mids and highs. This article compares faced and unfaced rigid fiberglass at various densities:

Density Report: http://www.ethanwiner.com/density.html

In all cases the facing is toward the room.

Regardless, you do not want plywood behind corner-mounted panels.

--Ethan

There's a term for a bass trap design which has a solid surface on both front and back with absorbent material between, but I can't remember it. Ahh, here we go -- a membrane absorber or panel trap. Anyways, I guess the foil facing acts as the front part of that mechanism...

good stuff, thanks for the link.

Mike, did you ask if they had speaker cloth?

When I went in to the local fabric store (Jo Ann Fabrics), I asked an employee if they had speaker grill cloth... thin and stretches both ways. Yes we have 'speaker cloth' and pointed me to it. It was black and maybe 60" wide (might have been less, hard to remember). I did not buy is as I was looking for a color to match my wall. As I recall, it was not expensive at all.

Mike if you do make some bass traps post a couple of progress pics if you don't mind, I'm using the Tri-Traps from GIK but they stack and I'm considering replacing them altogether for a cleaner built-in look. Dave that's cool about Jo-Ann Fabrics having the speaker cloth, that is one store we do have in town.

Mike, if you don't have a Jo-Ann's or can't find the speaker cloth, let me know and I'll pick some up and send it out to you.

Thanks fellas. The store I went to was Jo-Ann's. The female creatures that were being paid to assist, were not very helpful. Downrite bitches actually. The elderly lady was a sweetheart though.

The stuff I have, I'm pretty sure will work just fine for corner traps. Hell, that foil backing isn't anything a person can blow through, so I fail to understand how cloth makes much differnt - at least with this type of trap.

I'll post a couple pics. Things are pretty ugly so far. I had to get creative.........