AVAA Active Bass Trap Review (Revolutionary)
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- Опубликовано: 17 сен 2024
- Rarely do we get to see a product that will change audio production as we know it. The AVAA C20 Active Bass Trap from PSI Audio accomplishes what no other product has been able to do yet, which is correction of room modes from 15-150Hz without needing to knock a hole in the wall and construct a large bass trap adjacent to your studio.
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I'm intrigued by this device and also the doubting comments. I have become curious about these after having my mind changed by experiencing a trinnov added to a room I already knew (and struggled with) well. I was completely convinced it was filled with exotic reptile excretions until I sat down to work and I could just... hear. Before the trinnov was added, the room was treated before with a lot of bass traping, diffusion, etc. It was okay but assymetrical and there was still a lot of funny business in the lows. The trinnov made a big difference both in the form of frequency correction and imaging. The idea of an active technology picking up where passive tech is impractical has become more acceptable to me after that.
Clubs would be so much better if they had these... You might actually hear the music
Brilliant video! Subscribed
How often do you have to empty them? And is it dangerous?
haha
Thank you for this expert Video!! Very useful!
Hmmmmm nobody I've seen so far has posted any kind of before and after measurements. These things claim to capture low bass down to 15Hz, not just the little modal ringing stuff that you've demonstrated here. Traditional traps can take care of modal ringing easily. Let's a graph comparing real bass down in the 30Hz region and see how much it traps. For $2500 the differences shouldn't be subtle. I can do subtle all day long for much cheaper than that.
Agreed!
I agree in terms of cost. It cost the same amount of money as buying acoustic panels for an entire room from GIK acoustics.
On another note. What in gods name are you mixing that needs to be processed at 30 hz. Some people (Chris Lord-Alge and Jordan Valoriote to name a few) don’t even bother much with anything below 90 hz
@@dougleydorite There is so much info from 20hz and up which affect everything higher up, as well as playback on audiophile systems, cinemas, clubs, festivals etc. Without the bass being tight and sitting right in the 20 / 30hz region it has a knock-on effect on everything above. You can tell when someone didn't have good enough monitoring listening on a good system, because everything else sounds and feels more thinned out (too much), not enough weight, even down to instruments/elements occupying higher parts of the spectrum being high passed too high etc
@@dougleydorite hip hop/dance music has info below 90hz
Interesting that for such a revolutionary product, you didn't do much of a actual sound test , beside that kick
How is this different from what Harry Olson described in 1957 as an "Active Absorber"?
Bill Whitlock
AES Life Fellow
Ventura, CA
A properly calibrated subwoofer can also be an active bass trap for other subs. Only for live, unamplified music would I consider something like this to be useful
Good video, but some off info imo about passive acoustic treatment. You can build a meter thick absorber wall with great efficiency, it will probably compare to 2 of these active for 1/6 of a the price. I don't know what "hole in the wall" means. I built passive deep absorbers over large areas and it works well, its heavily inspired by a great acustichian in sweden. What you got right about passive absorbers are that you need alot of depth and area to work as well as active stuff (or as most people really intend it to work) Its pretty simple to do DIY, you just need to sacrifice some space in the room, and buy alot of rockwool :)
1 meter!? You might be missing the point of this product. If we could all have 1 meters surrounding us available, then we would all have rather large rooms to worn with. My room is 14 feet by 11 feet, short ceilings
Not saying anything about the product, just what is possible with passive absorption if you don't have the CASH for the active product
@@casperbjerkehagen9386 I hear you there. to me, having the cash to get a room with decent dimensions for acoustics is exponentially more expensive than $5k. This is where this product shines.
To side with you, if I had access to a room that could satisfy massive bass traps all over and still have room left after that, I'd go with a bigger room instead. "use headphones" seems like giving up. Throwing money into gear is also not a good option. It's a bit of a pandora's box situation that will always end in either making extreme compromise (headphones!?) or spending extreme money
Basically “all of it” more or less, it will be effective at the lowest frequencies to a good degree
@@casperbjerkehagen9386 this thing goes down to 15 hz though.. thats an 87 ft wavelength. no way you'd absorb that in a regular room
So it's essentially a sub-woofer with a mic feeding the signal through a low/band pass filter and reverse/delayed phase to try and cancel/dissipate the room mode aka active noise canceling. I highly doubt that it can reduce room modes by 90%, I mean at what frequency and SPL ?.
Actually it works differently than that - here are some videos from PSI that go into greater depth in terms of how they actually work and what they are doing:
ruclips.net/video/1bRz7yXiLNg/видео.html&feature=emb_logo
ruclips.net/video/lreSc7ty8h0/видео.html&feature=emb_logo
More info here:
www.psiaudio.swiss/avaa-c20-active-bass-trap/
@@jasondavies9567 Their explanation is far from clear. I find their terminology incredibly vague and misleading. "acoustic resistance", "acoustic impedance", " transducer membrane". From their description the acoustic resistance is simply a port which is in front of a speaker, or as they call it "transducer membrane". The acoustic impedance is the cancellation wave that the transducer membrane generates, which is an inverted signal from the mic. How is that different to what I've inferred in my original comment ?. This technology is nothing new and is known to function but is not exactly perfect. There's no reason to obfuscate facts.
@@JesusChristSaves2024 Here's a white paper on it that may help:
11231080-142507407741687344.preview.editmysite.com/uploads/1/1/2/3/11231080/article_aes.pdf
In short, it is indeed a patented active absorption solution that is different than previous solutions.
www.psiaudio.swiss/avaa-c20-active-bass-trap/
@@jasondavies9567 Thanks for the white paper. It very much confirms my assertions. The schematic clearly shows it, Thus I stand corrected. You are free to point out any perceived errors in my comprehension and elaborate on your own understanding of how this device works.
@@JesusChristSaves2024 At the end of the day, thay make a damn HUGE difference. I have 2, and I am still minblowed by them. Everything is so tight and you wouldn't believe how better I can treat my mid frequencies as well. They can call it tomato or tomEto I don't care, they are totally worth it
I have studied everything that could be found about this system, and... this is nothing but the Active Noise Canceling system, and can be achieved for a lot less money.
I also did some quite extensive research and came to a kind of similar and at the same time different understanding of how the PSI AVAA works:
Yes, in some way it tries to actively cancel out, i.e. compensate, the low tones that hit this device. But it does it with a little trick that I believe is quite unique:
1) The front panel of the PSI uses those little holes to let the air flow into the cabinet when there is over pressure from a wave‘s positive amplitude, and the woofer membrane gets pulled back by the electronics actively. And, this is done exactly at the speed and amount of movement to keep the pressure level at the microphone at neutral.
So, the PSI actively sucks in the air from its direct environment, thereby reducing the overpressure, e.g. in front of a wall or in the room‘s corner.
2) When the the sonic wave pressure outside the cabinet turns from over pressure to under pressure, the PSI‘s internal pressure mic recognizes that the internal pressure level goes below neutral and starts changing the movement direction of the internal woofer - it now starts pressing air out of the little box though all those little holes. Again, this compensates the outside pressure (here: it increases the under pressure towards neutral or close to).
So, I feel you are not wrong with saying „It is noice cancelling“. The trick of the PSI lies in the combination of this grid in front of the device that transforms high pressure at low air speed outside the device into lower pressure (deltas) at higher speeds in the inner of the box. This allows the internal woofer then to act against moving air. The result is that the physical effect on the air pressure levels around the device is much higher than you would get it from just the size of an active nose cancelling subwoofer.
Anyway, I am wondering what no other company aver engineered such a device. I believe that it is ultimately no rocket science, but most likely a lot of experimentation.
What do you think about my trial of explanation on this?
Joy of Filming I think that you have pretty much nailed it, in a sense of mechanics involved.
In the end, they only managed to introduce some latency with triple energy conversion.
In the second phase (let’s call it that) you also convert high pressure- low speed to lower - high speed coming outside, and thus probably diminish benefits from “phase one”.
The cumulative pressure being emitted from the device can’t be bigger than amount of air that active membrane is able to push. If it were, that could be used as an efficiency booster for speakers as well.
- maybe I am wrong and confused, but given few facts:
1.Active woofers are very effective, nothing wrong with them. (and can be used as woofers by them selves, read value)
2. The price of this fishy contraption that uses mic instead of obvious trusted signal cable...
Lead me to believe that they are after some audiophile money.
They know that that is the place where most gullible people live :))
If I am wrong, then they have found a way to manipulate physics in a new, Nobel prize worthy way.
I don’t know... what do you think?
@@mpelevic I guess the trick of this device and the reason for using a mic (instead of a copy of the speaker signal) is that the mic is the sensor for keeping the inhouse pressure at zero (whatever their definition of zero is, perhaps the regular air pressure in the room w/o any bass signal). That means that the device is completely self-calibrating to the position in the room, the pressure level of the bass to compensate and its phase.
And yes, it can only 'exhale' the volume of air that it sucked in before. But that is in perfect match with the wave theory of accoustics at walls.
On the other way round, positioning this device at a point in the room with far lower pressure maximums would limit its ability by far.
So, the ideal position for most cases will be corners of a room where pressure is max, but speed of the air lowest.
I talked to a friend of mine who is musician, tone- and recording engineer, and his wife is professional musician, too. And he is a passionate high end audio gear collector (more than 100 of the best microphones ever made, american famous amps, etc.).
He told me that they have 2 of those PSI in their home studio, and that the 5000 bucks for those are the best invest they ever made into their professional gear.
He described the effect to me as if the rear wall of the studio or listening room was completely teared down, allowing the bass waves to go into nirvana and never getting reflected back into the room.
So, probably will let Thoman Audi ship me one of those, jsut for testing. But my big fear is that I could love it and want to order a second - curently beyond any budgets -:(
Joy of Filming You have a point there, about eliminating trial and error with the positioning of woofers. That may be one important trait of those “suckers “. But, very expensive “positioning conundrum” eliminator.
I don’t know about you, it depends on a budget, but for that kind of money, I would spend a day experimenting with placement of another set of woofers.
After all, you and me never doubted if it works. The question is are they worth the money. And, is there a point of diminishing returns.
Guess, the answer depends on how wealthy one is.
Excuse my English. Obviously not my native language. :)
But, if you manage to get your hands on one of them, please remember to come back here and share your opinion. I am more inclined to trust you than some salesman.
Hello, Thank you for the video. Is it possible for you to post up a video demonstrating AVAA C20's with sound turned on and off? Thx,
I did do that with the kick drum in this review, as that sub area is the most obvious. I'll investigate on a full mix when I have more time. Thanks.
How do we know they aren't cancelling some of the direct sound, that's part of the actual source audio?
There is no cancelling of any sound. They don't work that way. They are not "noise cancelling". They eliminate the "node", but not the initial waveform. This results in the low frequencies not just sitting and resonating. But, the waveform isn't cancelled.
The truth is that I have been following this bass trap for a while. I love the theory, but when I look at actual measurements, I see that 2 or 3 of these (despite a huge cost) don't accomplish much, or at least not much more than passive treatment. For example in gearslutz or markus bertram
Do you have any proof to back up your claims?
@@dandavid378Dude for a fraction of a price of 1 of these you can treat your whole room
Hi Marcel! In your video, you mention having less rumble going out in your house. Is this really noticeable?
Hi Pierre. Absolutely, I checked upstairs and in other rooms, as my studio is in our basement. Those traps really work amazingly well. Others I talk to say the same.
@@MarcelJamesMastering so does it mean I can listen very loud with my 2.1 Genelec System without getting Troubles with my Neighbours?
How many AVAA’s for a 1,800 sq foot room?
I'll treat with my DIY setup and wear headphones thanks.
Same!
My room is about 150 think i could get by with one ?
Only way to really know is to try one.
Yeah. But where is the test?
What you would recommend if my budget is low? Are those DIY triangle bass traps are good to start with?
Sorry for the delayed response. To be honest, if you can't afford these or build proper traps in a wall, I'd suggest headphones with a very good low end response. I use the Blue.
@@MarcelJamesMastering thanks. I thought the same and got Audeze lcd-X with reveal plugin and goodhertz canopener
How many of those do you have? 2 or 4?
I'm using 2. I wouldn't mind having 4, but getting great results already with 2.
@@MarcelJamesMastering i think 2 in the back corners of my room 15 suqre meters will be good enough !
@@MarcelJamesMastering Hi, did you have to eq to compensate?? Thanks for the video
shame they are so expensive!
Waaay too expensive
A master engineer that can't do a proper lipsync 🤣