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RE: Question regarding J Risch tube trap construction

Posted by Brian Savage (A) on August 2, 2007 at 17:39:05

In Reply to: Question regarding J Risch tube trap construction posted by tominseattle on July 31, 2007 at 17:45:14:

I have built ten, twenty inch diameter, Jon Risch Tube Traps. I used a 1 mil thick plastic wrap on half of the tube as Jon described. It only took a minute or two to add this, so it was no big deal. However, because I used burlap that was sewn in a tube shape, the plastic did make it easier to slide the burlap down the length of the tube over the poly batting.

My room is also 13'X15', with 10' tall corners in the rear and 8' tall corners in the front. This is the smallest listening room I have ever had and I was pretty disappointed in the way it sounded.

I first built two 4 footers and installed one each in the front corners. While there was some level of improvement (bass seemed a little tighter, slightly better imaging), it wasn't quite what I had hoped for given the effort I put into it. Obviously there is a learning curve to building these and the first two were far more difficult than subsequent units. I built the first two completely by myself, but solicited the assistance of my wife or son for the wrapping of the outer layer of fence on the remaining units. Then it got pretty easy to whip these things out.

Next I added two more 4 footers to the front corners to go all the way to the ceiling. This made a profound improvement to the sound. Bass tightened up a lot more and got deeper. The soundstage got wider and much deeper. Very loud passages became much more relaxed in that you didn't clench your teeth and squint when you knew a big crescendo was approaching. They were just as loud and dynamic, in fact more so, but it just seemed the room could handle it better without overloading. Images became more three dimensional with more space between the individual images.

The biggest improvement though was something I didn't really expect to be so dramatic and that was an increase in detail. New things were just popping out of every record I played. My slight disappointment in the performance of just the first two tubetraps was replaced with complete joy with the addition of the third and fourth unit. It seems you really do need at least four in the room to make a substantial impact.

I then added two 4' units to the rear corners and got another significant bump in performance. All of the improvements the third and fourth units brought were enhanced even more except for only a minor improvement to soundstage depth. Next I added two 3' units to the rear corners (7' total height). Again a pretty nice enhancement, but at this point I think I was starting to hit the realm of diminishing returns. Adding the final two 3 footers to reach the ceiling of the rear corners brought even less gains. Noticeable, but not nearly as significant as the others. That said, there is no way I would consider not having all four corners treated from floor to ceiling. My room truly has been transformed.

Through all of this, I have kept the reflective plastic sheet side pointed into the corners. The high frequencies just sound so smooth and natural right now that I haven't wanted to change a thing. However, I am now building the Risch wall panels and have gotten four of them into the room thus far (that point of diminishing returns just faded away). As I add more panels I will experiment with the reflective side of the tubes to see what affect that will have.

Have fun building the rest of your tubes and even more fun listening.

This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:

Atma-Sphere Music Systems, Inc.

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