PICTURE INSIDE: Small L Shaped Room. Can I Put Bass Traps ON TOP of corner subwoofers?

[SadMonster]

Picture:

https://imgur.com/3FwlFhy

Yeah, so I really don't have anywhere else to place the speakers at all. Will I get a big improvement in sound just by putting bass traps on TOP of my subwoofers. I really don't have anywhere else I could put them.

 

[Bjorn]

The best would be to put a bass trap at the surfaces and place the subwoofer outside. And you could place the satelites on top of the subwoofers rendering the need for stands and have more room for bass trapping. Pressure based bass traps like VPR doesn't build more out than 10-11 cm and can be very effective.

 

[Hipper]

I installed GIK Soffit Bass Traps a few years ago and took measurements with Room EQ Wizard (REW) as I did so. Here are the results of installing just two bass traps, one in each of the front corners. This shows only the most important 0-500Hz region.

Green is without any treatment, purple with the soffit traps.

Generally peaks and nulls have been improved. A look at the waterfall plot gives more information on timing:

Obvious are large reduction in resonances.

These last two are spectograms which also illustrate the reduction in decay times. The noise at 40Hz is from external traffic.

Adding more bass traps continues to improve things but never does the complete job. For that I used a digital equaliser.

I've never tried putting bass traps on top of subwoofers but I see know reason why you shouldn't do it. I would experiment first before committing yourself if you can. It would be ideal if you could find the best locations for the subs in your room but appreciate that may not be possible.