Bag End’s new tunable electronic bass trap, E-Trap, is scheduled to go into production this month. Company executives announced the development of the new technology nearly a year ago, but the final stages of developing the accompanying software and some 11th-hour design improvements delayed production of the E-Trap.
“We got a little excited about the far-reaching possibilities of the technology that we kind of jumped the gun when we first announced the product last year,” admitted company president James P. Wischmeyer, with a laugh. “But after the initial euphoria, we realized we still had some work to do. So rather than rush it into production and find out, after the fact, that we had some problems, we opted to delay production until we were comfortable everything was right.”
Many designers of control rooms and studios have had to employ large passive acoustical bass traps to dampen low-frequency modal resonances. Adding to the space problem, passive bass traps, once tuned to a particular mode, are difficult to change to another mode, and a tuned bass trap can only be tuned to one frequency. “An alternative to the use of passive, acoustical bass traps is incorporating a properly designed feedback control scheme into a powered subwoofer, making the subwoofer exhibit the same dynamics as that of the passive bass trap,” Wischmeyer said. “This active feedback coloration control solution adds dampening to the low-frequency acoustic mode or modes and smoothes out the magnitude of frequency response in the room.”
The advantage of the closed-loop, controlled acoustic dampening system, or E-Trap, over traditional passive acoustic absorbers include ease of tunability to the target frequencies, tunability to multiple frequencies and small size (13x18x10 inches, WxHxD).
Suggested retail price for the E-Trap is $995. For more information, visit Bag End online at www.bagend.com.
