Low – frequency energy oscillates through our rooms like ocean waves. It’s like the mail, it keeps coming. It never stops. To manage this energy, we need sponges to soak up the excess “water” from each wave cycle. We need to do this to avoid the mixing challenge of room modes. Room modes can exaggerate or attenuate energy to a level where you will hear more of a certain octave band or nothing at all. Every room surface and the dimensions from wall to wall will determine what frequencies at what location and what amplitude those issues are. You could have 30 Hz. issue on your shorter wall and a 40 Hz. issue on the longer walls. You could have 60 Hz. issue with the floor to ceiling dimension. The dimensions of your room determine what wavelength of energy will fit and what will not. To manage the lower frequency issues within our mix rooms we need to have so much square footage of coverage using the correct rate and level of absorption on each wall surface area. If that wall produces 40 Hz. issue, we must use technology that absorbs at 40 Hz. and we must use enough of it to reduce the peak energy levels down to a place where we can EQ the rest.

Low -frequency management technology ranges from 16″ deep to get to 30 Hz. to 12″ deep to achieve a 40 Hz. level of absorption. Since our walls are the problem, we must ideally build a new treatment room inside our existing room. The treatment room will be a series of panels that are positioned along each wall surface area. In this room, it is going to be a challenge. We will need 12″ of space to treat down to 40 Hz. and we will need 16″ of space to treat down to 30 Hz. Where are we going to find that space availability without disrupting work flow? For the solution, we are going to turn to our Activated Carbon Diaphragmatic Absorber (ACDA-10/12) modules and our Carbon Panel modules. Our module series can be built and sized to fit the space requirements we have to work within.. We can change the height and the width to work within the existing space requirements but if we need to go down to 30 Hz., the modules must be 16″ deep. If we need to go down to 40 Hz. they must be 12″ deep. This can not change. In this room, we have 32 Hz. issue along the front and rear walls. We have 42 Hz. issue along the long walls which are the sidewalls.

Back to the front and rear walls with a 63 Hz. issue and our standard 70 cycle issue with the 8 ‘ floor to ceiling dimension. Looking at the sidewalls again, we have 83 Hz. dip and then back to the front and rear walls for a 94 Hz. problem that is + 5 dB over baseline. We will need at a minimum 75 sq. feet of surface area coverage along the front wall and the same 75 sq. ft. along each sidewall. Since low-frequency absorption technology is pressure based, we must provide enough surface area coverage on each offending surface area to avoid creating phase issues. If we use 50 sq. ft. of coverage on one wall surface area we must use that same amount on the opposite surface areas. Remember that the definition of an axial mode is unwanted pressure between two parallel walls not two parallel corners. It is the walls of our rooms that are the problem. If you want to get rid of the modal issues within your room, get rid of the walls. The best room size to avoid all axial, tangential, and oblique modal issues is no room at all.

We will move some gear around away from the walls and insert a series of modules against the front and rear walls for our phase 1 treatment. We will use modules that are 12″ x 12″ x 12″ under the console. We will use larger modules that are 18″ x 18″ for the sidewalls and we will stack them on top of each other creating a “wall” . Remember with low-frequency pressure management, it is all about the amount of square feet of coverage we can fit into the existing space to treat the issues. It doesn’t matter what the size of each module is. What matters is that we can place enough of them in the given space to achieve our surface area coverage requirements which are dictated by the frequency and amplitude issues at each wall location. The ACDA and Carbon Panel modules can be mixed together to treat any issue on any wall surface area and where treatment availability is an issue, we can use the modules in a stacking configuration to achieve our lower frequency absorption requirements.