The tri-corner of a room acts to transform and compress all of the acoustic energy in a sound wave into pure pressure fluctuations. Tube Traps are designed to take full advantage of the acoustic pressure zones created in the corners of a room. They convert the pressure changes into air movement within the dense walls of the Tube Trap. Through regulated friction in the walls of the Tube Trap, energy is damped out of the wave.

Because of how it works the Tube Trap is known as a "pressure zone bass trap." The diameter of the Tube Trap, not the length determines the low frequency cutoff. Only Tube Traps have built-in diffusive reflection panels to maintain ambience control. Tube Traps work best in areas where there is heavy bass, such as the corners of the room.

When low frequency sound is injected into a room, the waves reflect back and forth. At certain frequencies, the reflection patterns begin to overlap and lock into a synchronized condition with each other to produce standing waves. Whenever this pattern overlaps the speakers we get "room boom", an overpowering emphasis by the room/speaker arrangement to play only a few, very strong bass notes.

Nothing can actually get rid of room modes, short of removing the room entirely. But adding bass traps will even out the bass response and improve transient attacks and decay. Although every mode has a unique pattern of pressure zones distributed throughout the room, all modes have pressure zones in the tri-corners. ASC is the pioneer of corner loaded bass traps, and the Tube Trap remains the unsurpassed upgrade for all high performance audio acoustic systems.

When a woofer is located near a wall, its freefield frequency response becomes distorted. The nearby reflection drives a pressure wave back over the speaker cone. Walls, floor and corner reflections produce 5 to 20ms delay signals that mix with the direct signal at the driver to induce comb filtering effects into the bass range of the speaker and as well, side lobe beaming patterns.

A Tube Trap located at each of these reflection points will reduce the strength of the reflection. This reduces the comb filtering and side-lobing effects in the bass range. But not all wall reflections are bad. Speakers located near walls deliver better deep bass. Our boundary conditioning Traps are bandwidth limited to allow them to defeat comb filtering and beaming effects but not at the expense of wall loading in the deep bass range. Diffusive strips in the Traps are oriented behind the speakers to better develop the ambience.

Tube Traps can also be used in the open, close coupled to speakers in order to improve their performance. By stacking Tube Traps to expand the effective size of the speaker baffle board, the effect of increased bass directivity and efficiency is achieved. This works with sealed, front ported or dipole speakers, flown or stage mains, hi-fi, studio monitors, portable PA and nightclub systems.

In addition, the Tube Traps can be stacked in a forward stepped array that casts an acoustic shadow to the side of the speakers. The diffusive strips of the Tube Traps are oriented away from the front of the speaker for color-free horn loading. This shadowing technique protects on-stage mics from feedback, small room listening from side wall reflections and halls from excessive reverberation.